Return to David's theory of evolution, theodicy and purposes (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 02, 2024, 08:13 (3 hours, 13 minutes ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have fully ignored my deeper point. Yes reason and purpose can be used as interchangeable words, but not at the level I'm discussing and you are avoiding. God had a reason for his purpose as stated above!!!

Since you have totally ignored my detailed response, I will start all over again. There have been two questions: 1) what was your God’s purpose for creating life? Your answer: to design humans plus food. 2) What was your God’s purpose for designing humans? We had already discussed 2) at great length, and your response was full of contradictions (see below), but out of the blue you asked: “Why must He have a reason? It is part of your humanizing God?” There followed your absurd insistence that in this context reason and purpose were not synonymous. Now you admit that they are “interchangeable”. And the “level” you are now on is: “There must be an underlying reason for the wish to create us”, which is 2) above, concerning which you had just written “Why must He have a reason?” And twice now, you have even accused me avoiding that level!!!

Here is a list of purposes for life and for humans which you yourself have proposed or agreed at various times: God’s enjoyment of creation and interest in his creations (which make it possible that he created life for the purpose of his own enjoyment and interest), escape from boredom, to have a relationship with us, to be recognized and worshipped by us. You have also accepted the possibility that your God has thought patterns and emotions like ours, but at the same time you say he is not human in any way and is selfless! The latter beliefs invalidate all of the former, and yet even in the same post you tell us: “All we can say is all or none of them are possible.” You describe this mess as “schizophrenic” but claim that you never contradict yourself.

On the subject of God’s “humanization” and possible attitude towards us, we get the following:

DAVID: I follow the guideline that God is not human in any way.

dhw: But you also believe that all our “humanizing” proposals, including God’s love for us, are possible […].

DAVID: Not 'not possible'. but we simply do not know and factually cannot support any conclusion.

dhw: Agreed, and that applies even to God’s existence. But if you believe it’s possible that God loves us, you are not following the guideline that God “is not human in any way”!

DAVID: God's love is a human wish and disturbs me since God is not human. Remember Adler's use of allegorical meanings to solve your problems.
And:
DAVID: I knew exactly what Adler meant! Just as we agreed! We do not know how God views the word 'love'.

There is no “allegory”. We agreed long ago that the question is not whether God has a different dictionary from ours, but whether he loves us in accordance with what WE mean by “love”.

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.

dhw: In brief, you have accepted Raup’s overall statistics, and clearly you no longer believe that the 0.1% were the progeny of the 99.9% of species that became extinct. The 99.9% remain irrelevant to your concept of God's purpose. There is nothing left to argue about.

DAVID: The 99.9% created the 0.1%.

So you really do believe that 99.9 different species were the mummies and daddies of the 0.1 survivors. I guess they do certain things differently in Texas.