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

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 10, 2024, 20:54 (11 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy

DAVID: Neat sidestep. Evil is here for all God's we create, YOUR'S definitely included. My preferred stance is evil is a side effect of all the good God creates. It is an argument from proportionality.

dhw: It is YOU who sidestep by arguing that evil is so minor (= proportionality) that we should not bother to consider it! Yes, it’s here. And the question is why your omnipotent, omniscient, perfect God created it! You have completely ignored my alternatives, which include one of your own (now bolded). Part of the ground is covered again in the next exchange:

I've given you theodicy answers in the literature.

NEANDERTHAL and speciation

DAVID: You always return to a humanized God who enjoys watching a purposeless free-for-all, and has to experiment to advance progress.

dhw: Not purposeless, if he enjoys creating and watches his creations with interest, as you have proposed yourself. And you yourself have demolished all your “humanizing” objections by agreeing that he may have thought patterns and emotions like ours without becoming a two-legged mammal. Stop flogging that dead horse.

Not dead. You just can't imagine a God like mine.

Your God's purposes

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.

dhw: 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: Not a zombie. God has His own unknown reasons. He could create just for the sake of creating, but I believe He had us is mind to appear after the Big Bang.

dhw: You have just asked me to imagine a God with no reasons at all, as bolded. That would be a zombie. So now you say he does have reasons, and here you even tell us one reason you believe he has, and elsewhere you also provided us with a list of “humanizing” reasons why you think he might have wanted to create us. So you have contradicted yourself as usual – it is NOT a reasonable thought that God simply creates with no reason involved. Please stop tying yourself in knots.

But it is an approach which should be investigated. God possibly could just create without reason. God does not need human reasons to create. That is obvious. We don't know why He does it. And I have given all the possible reasons in past discussions, which are human wishes for a relationship. God might not wish relationships. Adler says 50/50. That is as far as we can go.