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

by dhw, Thursday, November 21, 2024, 09:51 (1 day, 23 hours, 38 min. ago) @ David Turell

God’s possible reasons for creating life and us

You offered us a list of these: enjoyment and interest, relief from boredom, desire for a relationship, recognition, worship. And you agreed with yourself that they were all possible.

DAVID: I understand that and it has to be balanced knowing that God is not human in any way.

dhw: Stop messing about with language. If your God probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours (as you believe), and if you believe that all the humanizing reasons YOU offer for his creating life and us are possible, then each of them is a way in which your God is like a human. (A better way of looking at it is that humans are in some ways like God, since he is supposed to have created us.) That does not make your God a human being.

DAVID: I think you've made a good summary. You have simply applied human wishes to God, as I have stated, and whether He has any or all of those attributes is known only to Him.

Some may be our wishes, but they are all your “humanized” guesses regarding his reasons for creating life and us, so please stop objecting to any “humanization”. Of course nobody knows the truth.

dhw: You also reject my alternative theistic explanations of evolution’s constant comings and goings: a free-for-all or the result of experimentation. Why? Your answer:

DAVID: I have constantly pointed out God is omniscient, knows the future, needs no experimentation and needs no entertainment.

dhw: Pointed out? How do you know?

DAVID: It is how I imagine our God.

dhw: And what makes you so certain that your God is messy, cumbersome and inefficient?
DAVID: He used an indirect cumbersome form of evolutionary creation.

dhw: You’ve left out “inefficient”, but you don’t find it surprising than an omnipotent, omniscient God should be so inefficient. […]

DAVID: You always forget God chooses for His own unknown reasons. Our imperfect view of evolution may be totally wrong for reasons God only knows.

dhw: If God exists, of course he chooses, and of course we don’t know his reasons. That is why we theorize. And then we test our theories to judge how feasible they might be. I would suggest to you that any theory which sees your God as being omnipotent and omniscient but also messy and inefficient is less likely to be true than a theory which has him doing precisely what he wants to do.

DAVID: I DID NOT SAY GOD THAT GOD NEVER DOES ANYTHING BUT WHATEVER HE WISHES TO DO.

You don’t know why he would messily and inefficiently design and cull 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with the one and only purpose you allow him to have, and under theodicy you have him creating evil because he had no choice (and even tried in vain to design cures for some of the diseases). So now you say he wished to be inefficient and he wished to create the evil he didn’t wish to create. I propose that if God exists, he would have a purpose and method which would not make him look such a fool.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: My complaint is that the 99.9% went extinct producing the 0.1% surviving.

How can 99.9 different species give birth to 0.1 species? Don’t you realize that if, as you insist, the 0.1% were the progeny (your explanation of “produce”) of the 99.9%, your complaint means that each of the 99.9% died giving birth to the 0.1%??? Please stop this nonsense.

DAVID: That is how we get to 100% of everyone who ever lived. There must be a recognition of continuity.

For the umpteenth time: the continuity is created by the 0.1% of survivors. Not by the 99.9% who produced no survivors. You agreed only a couple of days ago, as well as a few months ago:

dhw: Do you now agree with yourself that we are descended not from 99.9% of species that ever lived but from the 0.1% survivors?

DAVID: Of course.

That should be the end of it.