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

by dhw, Saturday, August 24, 2024, 08:23 (23 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Nothing in my thoughts is contradictory.

In this post you have, perhaps understandably, chosen to ignore every single contradiction, resorting to vague generalisations that have very little relevance to this ongoing dispute. You actually start with Adler, which was the last of my points, so I will take it from there and work backwards
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dhw: I am not arguing with Adler. You said your schizophrenic conclusions were your own, not his.

DAVID: Yes, not Adler's views. But from Adler we are told God is not human in any way.

That is one of the arguments you propose, and yet you categorically “reject deism. God made us. He must care about the results.” You have told us that Adler thinks the chances are 50/50 that God cares. I don’t know if Adler contradicts himself, but you certainly do. How can God care about us if he has no human attributes?

DAVID: 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.

Of course there is a vast difference, but that does not mean he has no human attributes. You know what you mean by “God must care”. Either he does or he doesn’t. You say he must do, but he can’t. That is a contradiction.

DAVID: 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.

Why? You have proposed that he might have created life and us because he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, and he may want us to recognize and worship him. They are all reasonable motives, just as it is reasonable to suppose that a creator might endow his creations with some of his own attributes. You have agreed explicitly that he may have thought patterns and emotions like ours, but then you say he can’t have thought patterns and emotions like ours. A blatant contradiction.

DAVID: 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.

The same may be said of all life forms, because of their sheer complexity, but we’re not arguing about God’s existence or about what Adler says or doesn’t say. We’re discussing your contradictory, schizophrenic views of your God’s purposes, methods and nature.

DAVID: 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!

And you have also used the adjectives imperfect, messy and inefficient. What is a “perfect goal”? Your God’s goal could have been a free-for-all, and he invented a perfectly efficient way of achieving it. Your concept of bacteria, viruses and molecules and humans as being “free” to do nasty things could mean that he is either incompetent or he wanted the free-for-all he produced. But you insist that we were his goal, and that he invented an imperfect, inefficient method to achieve it. Maybe your theory is wrong, and he is not as inefficient as you make him out to be.

DAVID: 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.

The schizophrenia here is that your perfect, omniscient, omnipotent God was incapable of creating a perfect system. (See “theodicy”.) And you refuse to accept alternatives because they entail human attributes which he may have but can’t have.

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."

So all this perfection is what you wish for, but since God is unknowable, you might be wrong, and so you might be right when you theorize that in addition to human attributes like benevolence and caring, he might have others, such as those you have proposed: enjoyment and interest and a desire for recognition and worship. You say it’s possible...and you say it’s not possible. But you never contradict yourself.

Theodicy

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

So he thought we might be able to solve a problem which he couldn’t solve for himself. It’s an original view of a God who is supposed to be perfect, omnipotent and omniscient. In any case, you have said he was testing us – and elsewhere, it was a challenge. That’s not the same as asking for help. Why do you think he would want to test or challenge us?