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

by David Turell , Sunday, October 13, 2024, 19:05 (4 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: Stop dodging. If I ask you why you think your God creates us, and you reply that you think he might want us to worship him, that has nothing to do with whether he cares about us or not. Wanting to be worshipped concerns HIS motives, not our wishes. You think he might want to be worshipped, but you think he is selfless, which means you think he doesn’t want to be worshipped.

We wonder if He wishes to be worshiped. We invent His wishes. The whole issue is one-sided: our thoughts about what He wants contain human wishes about God. That He may have created us for no reason at all is as plausible as all the reasons we guess at. My position is God is more likely selfless than not.

God’s purpose and 99.9% v 0.1%

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

dhw: So if all current species were wiped out and only bacteria survived, you would say that humans, elephants and ants fathered the bacteria, would you?

No. The only evolution we know is progressive, not retrogressive.

dhw: Evolution has taken place in a series of “slices”, a prime example of which is the Cambrian Explosion. Your whole, loudly trumpeted point, is that it was NOT a continuum, and only your God could have created all those species “de novo”.

You conveniently forget biochemistry and fix on phenotype. Ediacaran biochemistry was used to make the Cambrian animals, in a continuum!

dhw: We have other explosions and we have Raup’s extinctions, each of which marks the disappearance of the old and the appearance of the new. The continuum is provided by the 0.1% of the old which survive to create the new.

Of course.

The free-for-all theory

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”?

DAVID: A life without problems.

dhw: You believe that your God could have created a world in which there were no problems. That means no mistakes, no evils etc. But instead you have him being forced to create a world with problems.

God had to provide a working solution to create life. What we have is exactly what He chose.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: The answer is obvious! The system we have has major problems! It is the system God gave us.

dhw: Yes, if he exists. So why didn't he give us a world without problems, which he was perfectly capable of doing?

No He wasn't able! He gave us the only working system available, which He had to invent.

DAVID: We theoretically should have gotten a perfect system but have this instead.

dhw: Not “should”, but “could”.

No. God was stuck the only system that could/would work.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Your alternatives are skew-whiff! You think he is perfect with all powers and could have created a world without problems. Instead, he chose to create a world with problems. You keep telling us he had no choice. A first-cause omnipotent creator of all things would not be forced to create problems he doesn’t want to make, if he is perfectly capable of creating a world without problems. The obvious implication is that he WANTED the world as it is, not that he “has to stick” with something he doesn’t want!

So your mean old God purposely gave us problems? Fits my idea that Eden is boring.