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

by dhw, Saturday, November 23, 2024, 12:00 (2 hours, 51 minutes ago) @ David Turell

God’s possible reasons for creating life and us

DAVID: You have restated the discussion and told us:"[I have developed your own suggestion that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, so] he may have experimented either by creating a fascinating free-for-all or by deliberately making new discoveries and getting new ideas as he went along," purely human thoughts and desires. Again, like no God I've ever read about. Not all powerful and omniscient. You try to degrade my God by throwing in theodicy arguments when your God has exactly the same problems[/i]. (dhw’s parenthesis)

No reply from you regarding your own “humanizations”, as if enjoyment etc. would turn your God into an inefficient two-legged mammal. I hope not to hear that word again. Meanwhile, I have restored the important beginning of the bolded sentence, which explains why your God (if he exists) might have created all the species you believe he had to cull because they didn’t fit in with the purpose you impose on him. ALL our thoughts are human! Not even you can think like God! And why on earth should I “desire” God to have designed a free-for-all, or to have experimented? Only you express a desire, with your belief that his only purpose was to create you (plus food) although this leaves you degrading him as messy and inefficient. As for a God you have never heard about, my alternatives have much in common with deism and process theology, and you’ve forgotten that you dismissed these because they were not “mainstream”, although you can’t think of a single religion that insults your God as you do with your theory of evolution. Theodicy is dealt with in the next exchange.

DAVID: Please tell us about this form of God you propose. I would like to know how He avoids any evil.

dhw: He doesn't! That is the problem of theodicy!!! But if he is omnipotent and omniscient, there is no reason why he should not have created an Eden (a world without evil) if he'd wanted to. I have suggested that both he and we might have found that boring (you agreed that we would be bored, and he would be bored by a puppet show.). Meanwhile, please stop your silly objections to “humanizations”. None of my theories turn your God into an inefficient two-legged mammal, but all of them follow your own humanizations in relation to possible reasons for his creation of us.

DAVID: Surprise! No answer for your God's theodicy problems.

Theodicy is a problem for everyone who believes their God is all-good. It’s your problem, not mine. I do not regard it as a “given” that he is all-good! The OT depicts an at times self-centred, murderous monster, and who are we to say the OT has got it wrong? Like you, in one of your more open-minded moments, I regard avoidance of boredom as a possible explanation. Unlike you, I do not regard it as a solution to say that the good outweighs the evil, or that your omnipotent, omniscient God did not have the power or knowledge to avoid creating evil. The free-for-all theory would relieve him of the responsibility for its direct creation, but it would entail his NOT being omniscient.

99.9% v 0.1%

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.

dhw: That should be the end of it.

DAVID: How did the 99.9% disappear and left nothing? The 0.1% is what they produced as surviving. 100% as a total of evolution has to exist somehow!

100% is all the life forms that exist at any one time! If 99.9% of them go extinct, 0.1% of them survive. The survivors are not “produced” by the 99.9%, but by their mummies and daddies. The survivors then constitute the new 100%, and they go on to produce new species, as triggered by the new conditions. As I’ve said before, I’m not keen on these exact percentages, but the point is made abundantly clear by the example of the dinosaurs, which you hate because it makes the point abundantly clear and you don’t want to accept the point, although you agree with it. 696 species of dinosaur (99.43%) went extinct and left no survivors. 4 species of dinosaur (0.57%) survived – the avians. The 4 species of avians went on to produce thousands of species of avians during the phases of evolution that followed, and so the thousands were all descended from the 0.57% of survivors. You agree that we humans are descended from the past 0.1% of survivors, not the 99.9% that produced no survivors. So please stop disagreeing with yourself.