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

by dhw, Thursday, December 05, 2024, 11:11 (17 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

dhw: 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.

DAVID: 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: No need to switch to Covid. You are now saying that your God gave viruses the ability to murder millions of people and you don’t know his reasons. But you have said that you blame him, you won’t tell us why you blame him, and instead you complain that I criticize him!

DAVID: Our Congressional study group now blames nasty Chinese for Covid's invention.

That has been mooted for years and is the reason why my example was the flu that killed 50 million people in 1918/19, which you have now managed to omit.

DAVID: I view it as showing this as a side effect of giving us free will. These side effects are far outweighed by the good works. My blame shows the side effects are God's work.

The flu pandemic had nothing to do with our free will. The theodicy problem concerns the death of 50 million people, and the sufferings of a third of the world’s population. I quote you: “What is fair is to blame God for […] bugs causing diseases.” Blame = to state that someone is responsible for something bad. Whether or not they are “side effects” is irrelevant. Are you or are you not stating that your God was responsible for the deaths of 50 million people? Theodicy asks how one can reconcile this image with that of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. The problem is his creation of evil, not his creation of good!

DAVID: I am assigning the source of the events. Of course God did them.

So your God is at fault, which can only mean that either you do not regard him as all-good, or you blame him for his incompetence, which knocks out his omnipotence and his omniscience.

Your God's purposes

dhw: […] 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”.

DAVID: No disagreement. My thoughts are proposals God might or might not entertain. Stop making them as if written in stone.

Contrast this with your last entry on this post: “God is not human and does not have our emotions, while your God is fully human in thought and desires”.

You agree that YOUR “humanizing” proposals (enjoyment, interest, desire for worship etc.) are possible and do not make your God a human being, but next moment your God cannot have the “humanizing” thoughts and emotions YOU propose, because these would make him a human being! Stop disagreeing with yourself!

DAVID (under “negative theology”): God evolved us for His own reasons. He succeeded in producing us. Perhaps our critique is wrong.

God succeeded in producing 100 specimens of which 99 had nothing to do with the purpose you impose on him. Perhaps your theory about his purpose is wrong.

DAVID: […] the point here is humans appeared unreasonably by natural means. Assuming God in control, we are His favorite goal, to make any sense of our appearance.

dhw: All of life appeared “unreasonably”. Suddenly your God’s “one and only goal” has become his “favorite”, but that is not the point here anyway! The question here is WHY he created life and us. You insist that you know why he created life: to create us. But you reject all the feasible reasons listed above for his creating us. Instead, he is now selfless, so none of our reasons can possibly be valid although you agree that they’re all possible! And your God must be some kind of zombie, creating us thinking, feeling beings without having had any of the thought patterns and emotions which as first cause he’s supposed to have invented from nothing. What a wonderful surprise he must have had when we humans invented love, care, benevolence, not to mention enjoyment and interest which are “clearly, purely and entirely human characteristics”. Oh but hold on, your God is omniscient, isn’t he? How the heck could he have known about all these things if they didn’t come from him?

Your non-answer, quoted earlier, is to reverse your agreement that all the "humanizing" proposals are possible and do not make him human: “God is not human and does not have our emotions, while your God is fully human in thought and desires”. The emotions, thoughts and desires were YOUR proposals and are precisely what you agreed were possible without making him human.
You are not disagreeing with me but with yourself. Hence your description of your beliefs as "schizophrenic"!