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

by dhw, Sunday, December 08, 2024, 12:52 (14 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

DAVID: How many civil wars in how many countries? A tiny portion of the stable world. And where are all the rampant diseases with Covid under control? Yes, gloom and doom. Yes, they exist, but not in your magnified state.

dhw: You really don’t get it, do you? We are not discussing comparisons. 50 million deaths from one of your omnipotent, omniscient God’s viruses are enough to make us ask why God created evil. The question is not answered by counting the number of people who didn’t die.

DAVID: I prefer to look at the magnitude of all the good in the world. The comparison is your insistence on doom and gloom.

The problem of theodicy has nothing whatsoever to do with the proportion of good and evil, or with my personal attitude towards life (which is just as positive as yours), and it is not solved by shutting your eyes to the existence of evil. You have simply confirmed that you are unwilling to think about the problem, just as you shut your eyes to all your contradictions concerning evolution itself and your God’s human-like thought patterns, because you “first choose a God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.”

DAVID (earlier): I don’t know if God could have stopped it since the virus mutates on its own.

DAVID (later): It is a side effect of mutation powers He granted the virus.

dhw: So your all-knowing God knowingly granted the virus the power to kill 50 million people, and you don’t know if your all-powerful God had the power to stop it, but lots of people didn’t die, so let’s not think about theodicy. Head in the sand twice over.

DAVID: Again your doom and gloom approach to life. Would you prefer to not ever having lived?

Same again: We are discussing your God’s possible purposes, methods and nature, not my attitude to life. Clearly it hurts you to discuss your wished-for preconceptions, but I’m afraid the whole purpose of this forum is discussion. Nobody knows the truth, but that shouldn’t stop us from theorizing and testing our theories for feasibility.

Your God's purposes

DAVID: This is a discussion of possibilities of a relationship with God. He is not human in any way so our proposals MUST accept that in our discussion. We should not humanize God in any way.

Stop laying down the law. YOU say your God must have had a purpose, which was to create us plus our food. He must also, then, have had a purpose for creating us. YOU have proposed the following “humanizing” purposes: enjoyment, interest, desire for a relationship, to be recognized, to be worshipped. YOU agree that it is perfectly possible for your God and we humans to have such thought patterns and emotions in common. And why not? What is wrong with such proposals? And of course they do not mean your God is a two-legged mammal. You agreed to that as well. And now you disagree with yourself. And the alternative you offer comes next:

dhw: what “selfless” reasons can you offer for his wanting to create life and us?

DAVID: Just imagine that God simply creates, no reason involved, is a reasonable thought.

For years you have (in my view quite rightly) insisted that your God is purposeful, and that his purpose for creating life was to create us. Now you’ve got him creating without any purpose at all. A zombie. And you think that is reasonable.

DAVID: Real evolution requires culling to achieve successful survivors, doesn't it?

dhw: I don’t know what you mean by “real” evolution. The reality – if we accept Raup’s figures – is that 99.9% went extinct and 0.1% survived. […] Your theory is that it was all a messy, inefficient way of designing us. It makes no sense for an omnipotent, omniscient God to be messy and inefficient, but you reject any other theistic explanation, even if it makes perfect sense.

DAVID: By 'real' I mean any process of evolution which approaches a goal in stepwise stages. Considering who God is, you prefer a powerless God who enjoys free-for-alls for entertainment, and experimenting to find answers in evolution.

Having just informed us that a purposeless God is a reasonable theory, you go back to your purposeful theory of evolution, which of course is stepwise. I don’t “prefer” any type of God, and don’t even know if he exists. But if he does, he is certainly not powerless, though he is not necessarily omnipotent either – as you have confirmed with your examples of murderous viruses and humans with free will. You proposed that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but you try to trivialise your own proposal by calling this “entertainment”. A free-for-all would explain the comings and goings of species – as opposed to your theory that your perfect God inefficiently designed and then had to cull 99 out of 100 species because they had no connection with the one and only purpose you allow him to have. Experimentation would also explain the comings and goings which you can’t explain. You prefer to ridicule your God as messy and inefficient, whereas an experimenting God (either looking for new ideas or pursuing a particular goal) does precisely what he wants to do.