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

by dhw, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 09:30 (11 days ago) @ David Turell

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. […]

DAVID: I've given you theodicy answers in the literature.

I’m discussing these subjects with you. Can you not see that “proportionality” does not cancel out the existence of evil, and the problem of theodicy is the existence of evil, not the amount of good? And why do you dismiss even the theory that corresponds to one of your own? Namely, that he is incapable of devising a world without evil, though he did his best to prevent some of the consequences. This makes him inefficient (your term) and not omnipotent.

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.

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

YOU have proposed a number of “humanizations” as reasons for his creating us, you agree that he and we may share thought patterns and emotions, you agree that all these proposals are possible, and you cannot for the life of you think of a single reason why your God should deliberately design 99 out of 100 species irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him. But still you reject any explanation that entails a commonality between the creator and his creations.

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.

DAVID: 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.

You have just accused me of proposing a “purposeless” free-for-all, and after years of telling us how purposeful your God is, and still refusing to budge on your belief that his sole purpose was to create us plus food, you are now advocating a purposeless God (a zombie) with none of the thought patterns and emotions which somehow he has managed to create in us. What is wrong with the reasons you have given: enjoyment, interest, desire for a relationship, recognition, worship? If even your mentor Adler says 50/50, and you agree that your humanizing proposals are possible, stop rejecting my agreement and my other explanations because they are “humanizations”.

dhw: Although you accept that all my (and your own) alternative theories relating to your God’s purposes, methods and nature are possible, they are impossible for you because they are different from your own fixed wishes and beliefs, including your astonishing conclusion that your perfect God is a messy and inefficient designer.

DAVID: Can you describe evolution in any other way?

I have done so repeatedly: if your God wants an unpredictable free-for-all, or wants to provide himself with new ideas or to try different ways of achieving a particular goal, he is doing precisely what he wants to do. That = efficiency.