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

by dhw, Sunday, August 25, 2024, 11:59 (22 days ago) @ David Turell

(Reminder:
DAVID: Nothing in my thoughts is contradictory.)

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.

dhw: 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: Human attributes as applied to God land us in unknown territory. Since God is supernatural how He might 'care' in His sense is an unknown.

You used the term, and you know what you meant by it, as it is your reason for rejecting deism. Either he cares or he doesn’t. You say he does, but as he has no human attributes, he doesn’t.

DAVID: Explained above.

There is nothing to explain. Either he conforms to your image of him as “caring” or he doesn’t. You say he does but he doesn’t. Not contradictory?

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.

dhw: 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: My listed proposals as above are reasonable thoughts, BUT I never said, "he can’t have thought patterns and emotions like ours." Your distortion again. However He acts within those attributes may be totally different than our actions.

How can he possibly have thought patterns and emotions like ours if “God is not human in any way”? Stop this silly obfuscation. And we are not talking about “actions”. Is it possible or impossible that he enjoys and is interested, wants to be recognized and worshipped, according to what YOU mean by the terms you have used? And do you really believe your God would have created all the different forms of life if he hadn’t enjoyed doing so and wasn’t interested in his own creations? Is your concept of God a form of zombie? Please answer. Your “yes” but “no” to possible human attributes = contradiction, as does your announcement that your beliefs are schizophrenic but you never contradict yourself.

DAVID: I said God used a cumbersome evolutionary method to achieve a perfect goal, us!

dhw: 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: He is not inefficient: He made a universe, created life, and His form of evolution created us, the most complex item in His universe. My problem is wondering why the Cambrian animals were directly created and then direct creation stopped.

That is not your only problem. You have claimed that your God deliberately created and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species both pre and post Cambrian that were irrelevant to the only purpose you allow him to have, although he was perfectly capable of creating species directly (as in the Cambrian). That is why you have called your perfect God’s method of achieving his goal imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

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.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: He gave us the brains which could help solve the problems. Test or challenge are appropriate thoughts.

So either your God was powerless to prevent the evil he had produced (he needed help), or he produced the evil to test whether we could “cure” it, and this proves that he is omniscient and all-good. And let’s not forget that he must care and be interested although he is not human in any way, but you don’t contradict yourself.