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

by dhw, Sunday, September 08, 2024, 08:49 (11 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My dog has human attributes. So, a non-human God can have human attributes like 'love'. Nothing here is schizophrenic. God chose to create us indirectly for His own reasons, none of which satisfied any personal need for self-satisfaction.

If a non-human God can have human attributes like ‘love’, you are contradicting yourself when you say that he “is not human in any way.” If your God might have enjoyed creating life and been interested in his creations, and if he created us because he might have wanted us to recognize and worship him, you are contradicting yourself when you say he is selfless. You have rightly described your conflicting beliefs as “schizophrenic”.

DAVID: Your contorted logic sees a schizophrenia that is non-existent. I am appealing to God for a relationship He may not wish to have or NEED to have.

dhw: It is your consistent self-contradictions that led YOU to use the term schizophrenic. I don’t recall you “appealing to God for a relationship”; the discussion has been about your belief that your God may have created us because HE wanted a relationship with US.

DAVID: Again, covered before. Wanting worship implies relationship, as does caring, loving, etc.

All of which are human attributes, though it is your rigid belief that your God is not human in any way, and wanting to be recognized and worshipped is not selfless. Hence your description of your beliefs as “schizophrenic”. The fact that you called your beliefs schizophrenic and now claim that I see “a schizophrenia that is non-existent”, is another example of your schizophrenia.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From 0.1% surviving.

DAVID: All species have ancestors!!! The 99.9% extinct species produced the 0.1% now living. The dino/bird sliver of all of evolution is a nutty non-example of the reality. (dhw's bold)

The fact that all species have ancestors does not mean that 99.9% of all extinct species were the ancestors of us and our contemporary species! Furthermore, it is your belief that we and our contemporary species are directly descended from species which your God created “de novo” during the Cambrian explosion. “De novo” by definition means without ancestors, and so you believe that not even 0.1% of pre-Cambrian species were our ancestors. Why do you think the dinosaur example, with only 4 species out of 700 producing ancestors of current species, is a nutty non-example of the reality? Were all the species your God designed during the 3,000,000,000 pre-Cambrian years also nutty non-examples? Let me repeat the unequivocal statement you keep forgetting:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From 0.1% surviving.

Please tell us how we and our food can be directly descended from the 99.9% of creatures that ever lived, although we and our food are only descended from the 0.1% surviving.

Theodicy
dhw: […] if his intention was to test/challenge us with all the bad bacteria, viruses, floods, famines etc, then he could only have created them deliberately!

DAVID: Deliberately created to do good, but with bad side effects. You can't have the good without the bad.

dhw: I accept the fact that good may result from correcting bad. But you have proposed that your all-good God created bad as a challenge/test for us humans. Nothing to do with “side effects”. That is the theory I am now querying. If you don’t wish to retract it, please explain why you think your God wanted to test us.

DAVID: I view 'challenge' as God asking us to use the brains He gave us to help with the bad side effects.

How can testing mean asking for help? And why would an all-powerful God need our help anyway? Does he think we’re cleverer than him?