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

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 03, 2024, 18:46 (1 day, 0 hours, 26 min. ago) @ dhw

Theodicy

DAVID: I say the bugs are necessary and you say unnecessary. I see them fitting into an ecosystem to play a role. Your proof? Life requires high-speed reactions by proteins free to make errors. It appears to be the only way that works. But, of course, you always know more than God as you criticize Him.

dhw: You still haven't told us why you blame him. What are the evil bugs necessary for? Let’s take an example. In 1918/19 a flu bug killed approximately 50 million people, and infected about a third of the world’s population. Please tell us why you think this bug was necessary.

Or why was Covid necessary? I view viruses as necessary for life and occasionally one turns bad. God did not limit their mutation drive for His own reasons. For Covid we learned to vaccinate and it made people survive.

dhw: I don’t even know if your God exists, and my questions are not criticisms of him but of your illogical theories and blatant contradictions, which result in you ridiculing him as inefficient (use of evolution, see under “negative evolution” on the miscellany thread), trying to minimize the problem of evil, blaming him for all the natural disasters and bugs but exonerating him as above, or arguing that your omnipotent, omniscient God was neither powerful nor knowledgeable enough to create a world without such problems. You acknowledge that all my alternative theistic explanations of evolution are logical, as are the possible reasons we both give for his wanting to create life and us. (The free-for-all explanation of evil ties in with these, and I do not regard the proposal that God may not be omniscient as a criticism.) I see absolutely nothing wrong in your God enjoying, being interested, wanting a relationship, wanting to be recognized and worshipped. You have agreed that these are thought patterns and emotions which he and we may have in common, that they are all possible, and that they do not make him a human being. But next moment you reject them all because you say they are “humanizing”.

God's "enjoying" or being "interested" are clearly purely entirely human characteristics you constantly apply to your vision of a humanized God.

dhw: The rest of your post simply repeats all these illogicalities and contradictions, as summed up by your concluding remark:

DAVID: My agreement is God is not your humanized form. What I have proposed is a group of human wishes for a relationship. You are correct, we have no way of knowing what God desires and my proposals in no way make Him human..

dhw: It is you who proposed that his reasons for creating us might be his wanting a relationship, recognition and worship. You also proposed that he enjoyed creating and was interested in his creations. That is your “humanized” form. We agree that we have no way of knowing his desires, but you still insist that you know his one and only desire (to create us plus food). You agree that all your proposals and mine are possible, and that having human-like patterns of thought and emotions do not make God a two-legged mammal. You wrote “Let’s leave it at that”, but you won’t.

Late addition:
“Wound microbiome aids healing”

DAVID: This research shows that many bacteria are working for the good. This should be remembered when the bad bacteria issue is raised in theodicy discussions.

dhw: Another of your dodges. Nobody is disputing the good! That doesn’t explain the bad!

I have explained them as side-effects of the good.