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

by David Turell , Saturday, October 12, 2024, 19:23 (5 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: THEY are human wishes because they are proposed by humans regarding possible God wishes!

dhw: Your efforts to twist meanings are becoming farcical. Here is the most obvious example: I asked you why you thought your God might have wanted to create humans. One (very reasonable) answer: because he might want us to recognize and worship him. This is your explanation, not your wish. Why would you wish that he would want us to worship him??? But it contradicts your belief (wish?) that God is selfless.

That reasonable explanation contains the wish! We don't know if God cares! In this two-way relationship we only KNOW one side.

DAVID: You don't understand the difference: a selfless God creates without any expectations for Himself. Bolded above are my human proposals for a relationship with God. His response is Adler 50/50.

dhw: Stop flannelling. I know what selfless means, and the desire to be worshipped cannot be selfless. You are deliberately trying not to understand the implications of your answer to my question why he created us. 50/50 relates to whether God cares about us, and that does involve our wishes.

To repeat " We don't know if God cares! In this two-way relationship we only KNOW one side."

God’s purpose and 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: We obviously look at evolution differently. Let's agree 99.9% extinctions preceded/produced 0.1% survival. And WE come from the survivors.

dhw: Let’s agree that plural extinctions resulted in approx. 99.9% of species coming to a dead end. Each 0.1% of survivors produced each subsequent stage of evolution right up to our own stage, which has evolved from the previous 0.1% of survivors.

Not agreed. Not dead ends. The 0.1% survivors are the progeny of the 99.9%. Stop slicing up the continuum of evolution.

The free-for-all theory

DAVID: That God did not want a boring Garden of Eden for us, is a reasonable guess.

dhw: He did not want it. Not he couldn't design it.

DAVID: […] Of course, He could design Eden if He wished.

dhw: Thank you. That means he was not forced to create a system with warts, but he wished to do so. Case closed.

DAVID: Not closed, Eden is biblical theory, not at a worldly practical level. In reality God used the only system that could work, based on His omniscience. He would know all possibilities.

dhw: I’ve used “Eden” as shorthand for a perfect world without mistakes and without evil. So your comment above means: Of course, he could design a perfect world without mistakes and evil IF HE WISHED.

DAVID: I did not use Eden as you did!!!

dhw: What did you mean by a “boring Garden of Eden”?

A life without problems.

dhw: It is you who insist that despite his omniscience and omnipotence he did not have the knowledge or power to do it.

DAVID: A working system means it must work. God invented what works. Ours does. An omniscient God would know the limits!

dhw: An omnipotent God would have no limits. An omnipotent God would create what he wants to create. How do you know that this was not the system he WANTED, as opposed to being a system demanding evils that he didn’t want?

The answer is obvious! The system we have has major problems! It is the system God gave us. We theoretically should have gotten a perfect system but have this instead. Thus God is perfect with all powers OR creating life requires a system that works with warts and God knows He has to stick with this system because IT WORKS like none other. Picked despite His powers.