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

by dhw, Friday, December 13, 2024, 11:44 (9 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy - a summary

DAVID: I am not an expert in theodicy. I've given you the answers they offer. His inefficiency is in the mode of evolution He uses, and evil is a side effect of His good works. Without His good works from His omnipotence the world would not exist.

If God exists, then yes, he created our world, which contains both good and evil. That does not mean he is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. If he is all-powerful, he must have been capable of building a world without evil. Why didn’t he? If he knew everything that would happen from beginning to end, why did he create or allow evil? How can he be all-good if as first cause he invented evil? Those are questions asked by theodicy. “Proportionality”, which focuses only on the good, avoids the question completely; “inefficiency” in this context (as opposed to your wacky theory of evolution) would assume that he wanted to be all-good but lacked the power and the knowledge to fulfil his own wishes. Another possibility, illustrated by the murderous viruses, natural disasters and murderous free-willed humans, is that he wanted the free-for-all which appears to have existed all through the history of life on Earth. This ties in with the theory, occasionally accepted by you, that he and we would have found an Eden – a world without problems – too boring. He could still be omnipotent (smash us to bits if he wants to), but not omniscient (enjoys the unpredictable), and not all-good (e.g. like the self-centred God of the OT, whose desire to be freely worshipped led him to murder anyone who didn’t do so). Can you - or the mysterious “they” in your comment - think of any other answers to the questions posed by theodicy?

Under “Neanderthal”

dhw: […] you cannot for the life of you think of a single reason bbbwhy 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.

DAVID: He is not us in any way. That is a basic starting point. The bold is your usual total distortion of God's evolution which requires culling.

“In any way”? You agree that he may have thought patterns and emotions like ours, you agree that all your “humanizations” are possible, and you agree that these do not make him a human being. Stop contradicting yourself. As regards evolution, a purposeful, omnipotent, omniscient God should not need to design and then kill 99 irrelevant species out of 100 in order to achieve the goal you impose on him. That is why you call him inefficient.

DAVID: Can you describe evolution in any other way?

dhw: 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.

DAVID: It also equals a highly humanized God.

It means that your God has endowed us with thought patterns and emotions like his own, which you regard as perfectly possible and which you agree do not make him human.

DAVID (taken from “LUCA”): The result of God's evolution is a huge human population with full resources on Earth from His evolutionary process with culling!!!! It is no matter 99.9% were culled to achieve this great result, us and our food.

We agree on the result, so “it’s no matter” whether 99% became extinct in a process guided by luck (Raup), through a free-for-all, or through experimentation in the quest for new ideas or for the best means of achieving a particular purpose, and it’s no matter if your own theory ridicules your God as being messy and inefficient. You might as well say “it’s no matter” whether your God exists or not if all you can think about is that we are here.

Your God's purposes

DAVID: […] it is an approach which should be investigated. bbbGod possibly could just create without reason.bbb
And:
DAVID: I don't accept your suggestions. I opened the idea of a purposeless God just so we could look at Him in that way. And I close it noting He must have His own reasons.

You conclude that your God must have his own reasons, and you reject the approach that “God possibly could just create without reason”. So why raise it in the first place? Perhaps another way of dodging your own perfectly reasonable “humanizing” reasons which you schizophrenically regard as possible but not possible?