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

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 24, 2024, 19:12 (23 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Thank you for showing us deism and process theology as your background sources.

dhw: You criticize me on 18th September for ignoring schools of thought about theology, and on 19th September you inform us that you ignore all schools of theology! Two schools do support aspects of my proposals, and you thank me! What point are you trying to make? Is the fact that you are all alone in your theology to be praised, whereas my wrongly diagnosed dismissal of all theology is to be criticised? Back to your double standards! Furthermore, your starting point is the God you wish for, whereas mine is the wish to find feasible solutions to the unsolved mysteries of life.

I have been quite open about my sources. I have gotten you to also be open. Not that you were hiding them. What are 'feasible solutions to the unsolved mysteries of life' if not God?

DAVID: It explains your preference for a humanized form of God.

dhw: You told us your dog has thought patterns and emotions like ours but that doesn’t mean you are “humanizing” him. You agree that your God may have thought patterns and emotions like ours, but then you say that means “humanizing” him! Stop contradicting yourself!

My non-human God can be compared to my dog in the sense that non-human individuals can logically have human-like attributes without in any way be human.

DAVID: An interacting process God is different than the way I view God. We start at different God's, so you should not berate me for my starting point. You have one also.

dhw: Your self-confessed starting point is the God you wish to believe in, and it leads you to endless contradictions: a God who shares thought patterns with humans but is not human In any way; who may have created humans because he enjoys creating and wants us to recognize and worship him, but he doesn’t because he is selfless; a God who is all-powerful and all-knowing but cannot prevent or cure the evils he has created; who is all-good but deliberately invents evil as a challenge or test for humans or as a means of avoiding boredom; who is all-perfect but must be ridiculed for his imperfect, inefficient design of evolution; a God envisaged by no other expert in the history of theology, but your version must be right because you know best. My starting point is total ignorance, even regarding your God’s existence, and I offer alternative, feasible views of his possible nature, purposes and methods if he does exist.

You have always presented a highly humanized God. He did His work and is gone or He is still changing. I am quite happy with the God I envision.

99.9% v 0.1%
dhw: […] you continue to ignore your very own agreement that the current 0.1% is NOT DESCENDED FROM ALL THE CREATURES THAT EVER LIVED BUT ONLY FROM THE 0.1% OF SURVIVORS. In other words, extinct species leave no descendants.

DAVID: Again, you are confused by using specific examples. Raup's statistics are overall estimates with all species lumped together. That is a view I favor. Of course, our start was evolved along with dinosaurs, so your worry about three billion prior years has no basis. It took time to evolve us!

dhw: If all species are “lumped together”, they must include your 3,000,000,000 years’ worth of pre-Cambrian non-ancestors, and the 99.43% of non-ancestral dinosaurs. And you still haven’t told us why you were insane when you agreed that the current 0.1% are NOT descended from all the creatures that ever lived but only from Raup’s 0.1% of survivors.

Of course, we are part of the surviving 0.1% which descended from the 99.9% now extinct.

Theodicy

DAVID: God's 'deliberate gift' was our brain, which came with free will, which, in turn, allows us to fight evil and help God to correct all the problems as best we can. So, God made a challenging reality because of the freedom-of-action that makes life possible and presents problems all at once. IT CAN NOT BE ANY OTHER WAY. This does not reduce God's powers as you try to claim. Life cannot be perfect and that automatically excludes a Garden of Eden. Thus, God did not decide for a missing Garden of Eden! It was never a philosophic decision.

dhw: Your omniscient God gave us free will, knowing that we would use it to commit evil. How does that make him all-good? If he needed help in correcting problems he was forced to create, how does that make him all-powerful? You have blamed him for creating natural disasters and murderous bugs. Please tell us why you blame him. What authority do you have for claiming that your God did not deliberately create good and evil in order to avoid the boredom of a Garden of Eden? (April this year: “DAVID: That God did not want a boring Garden of Eden for us, is a reasonable guess.”) How did you gain such access to your God’s way of thinking, bearing in mind that no schools of theology think as you do? And why do you keep asking me what experts/schools of theology support my alternatives when you boast that your theories are entirely your own?!

You finally described your schools of thought. And that supports your humanizing of God. In April I suggested Eden as 'a reasonable guess' and you present it as if I accepted it as full fact. Shame on you. I look at God as presenting a challenging form of life. We have the God-given brains for it.