Return to David's theory of evolution, purpose & theodicy (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, August 23, 2024, 17:46 (24 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: What I wish for God, from God are all human wishful thinking. My standard view of a perfect God who is selfless: " God is perfect, selfless, and in no way has human attributes. He did not create us to satisfy His own needs, because He has none."

dhw: Caring is indeed a wish. The following proposals are not wishes but perfectly feasible proposals made by you to explain your purposeful God’s possible reasons for creating life and us: 1) he might want us to recognize him and worship him, 2) he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. You have stated categorically that he may have human attributes (thought patterns and emotions like ours), but you state categorically that he has no human attributes. You have also confessed that your views of God are schizophrenic, but you do not consider the above views contradictory! Your denial is further proof of your schizophrenia!

dhw: […] you absolutely refuse to consider the possibility that your interpretation of your God’s purpose and method might be wrong, and you reject any alternatives on the grounds that although you believe your God may have human thoughts and emotions, your God cannot possibly have human thoughts and emotions.

DAVID: That you propose your humanized God indicates you have no principals in how to think about God, such as I follow from Adler.

dhw: The principle I follow is that if God exists, his purposes and methods will make sense. I see no sense in a God who may have human attributes but definitely doesn’t, or a God whose method of achieving his purpose is so nonsensical that you yourself ridicule it as imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient. As far as I know from your posts, Adler does not hold principles that demand self-contradictory, schizophrenic views of God, or an imperfect, inefficient use of evolution by a perfect, omnipotent God – but I am not arguing with Adler. You said your schizophrenic conclusions were your own, not his.

Yes, not Adler's views. But from Adler we are told God is not human in any way. If we apply any human attributes, they must be considered in allegorical terms, an approach that upsets you. And all it means is that there is a vast difference between God and humans. The only direct comparison is that we both have minds and can think. But God's thoughts must be beyond any type of thinking we can imagine. And to remind you, Adler used Darwin's form of evolutionary theory to note that only God could have created humans, as our brain could not have been developed by natural forces. Adler never told me not to be critical of God's actions. The now bold "imperfect, inefficient use of evolution" is your perversion of my statements. I said God used a cumbersome evolutionary method to achieve a perfect goal, us! I also have noted God's choice may be the only one available to achieve the goal. Only God would know that. Why He produced the Cambrian animals de novo, and then evolved everything else is His preferred choice of action, for reasons known only to Him. No schizophrenia here.

Theodicy

dhw: Your first answer is “proportionality”, which means pretending that evil is so minor compared to good that we should simply ignore it.

DAVID: Not ignore. Use our human brains and ingenuity to help the problems.

dhw: This is your other answer to theodicy: God has created evil in order to challenge us. How does that prove he is all good, and do please give us your views on WHY he wants to challenge us.

DAVID: He gave us brilliant brains. Why not put them to the test?

dhw: Why do you think he wanted to test our brilliant brains? […]

DAVID: He knew we would be of great help in the evil problem.

dhw: So you admit there is a problem, and he obviously knew there would be a problem which he was responsible for, and...what? Your omniscient, omnipotent God needed help in order to solve it?

Knowing there would be problems and producing us to help, seems a reasonable solution.