Return to David's theory of evolution, purpose & theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, May 03, 2024, 08:13 (17 days ago) @ David Turell

I will try to extract the salient points from each subject.

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

I asked this unequivocal question in order to end the long-drawn-out discussion you are now trying to re-open. You agreed that we and our contemporaries are directly descended from 0.1% of all the creatures that ever lived. We are not descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived. And yes, we are descended from a line of mammals that co-existed with the dinosaurs, but the vast majority of dinosaurs left no descendants except for birds.

DAVID: Theologians have NOT taught me to invent my own God!!

You said humans invent the God they want, and you first choose the God you want, and “the rest follows”. Since this is your approach, I can only assume this is what they have taught you to do. If it isn’t, why are you doing it?

DAVID: […] They have taught me to think about God as a 'personage like no other person'.

If they tell you he is a unique personage (which means an important human being), then that allows for human attributes (which you have agreed he probably has). He can love/hate, be interested/bored, nice/nasty etc. But no person is eternal and immortal, sourceless and immaterial, and able to create universes and bacteria etc. Of course he's unique (if he exists).

DAVID: There are rules to follow like allegorical thought which bother you so much, as just below:

Only your God can “make rules” about God! And there is no “allegory” or symbolism in the above attributes. We both know what we mean by enjoy, love, interest etc. An “allegorical” God would be an invented symbol like Faithful and Hopeful in Pilgrim’s Progress. He would stand for the attributes you want him to have: omnipotence, omniscience, all-goodness. If that is what you have been taught, then it’s the same as inventing your own God. And whatever “rules” you follow lead you to confusion and contradiction. You want humans to be your God’s sole purpose, so you ridicule him for his inefficient way of producing them.

DAVID: I do not WANT my God to HAVE humans as His purpose! That is a logical conclusion from the known facts about evolution as to His purpose and Adler supports me.

But you attach this "logical conclusion" to your belief that your God also inefficiently designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only purpose. Does Adler support you?

dhw: You want your God to be all-powerful, all-knowing and all good, and so you come up against the problem of theodicy.

DAVID: The theodicy standard answer is proportionality, the necessary good outweighs the side effects. Without the required 'necessary' life would not exist.

And so your all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God gave humans freedom to rape, murder and slaughter – but this was necessary, because...? You say he would have found puppets boring, and earlier he wanted us to recognize and worship him – but this makes him self-centred, which clashes with what you want him to be. You also refuse to tell us why you blame him for designing his murderous bugs.

dhw: [..] you blame me for not knowing how theologians think about God. Today you write:

DAVID: Humans have created a huge compendium of intellectual essays in pursuit of the subject. Take Thomism, [...] I find and respect much of his views.

dhw; Yes indeed. And you can pick and choose those theologians you like and pooh-pooh those you don’t. There is no ONE way to think about God, but you have settled on the view that you can invent whatever God you like, and the rest will follow.

DAVID: […] Of course, I have a chosen form of God. The contradictions are your problems as you constantly try to create a humanized God, against all the rules I follow.

I have pointed out some of your own humanizations, and the fact that you follow your own rules does not make your conclusions any the less illogical and contradictory. Maybe you should change your self-inflicted rules. I went on to list your dodging techniques.

DAVID: I ignore or skip portions of my theology?? How do you know it all, then? Your coocoo 99.9% problem fully answered above.

In your answers, you leave out the relevant sections of your beliefs that make them illogical. For example you frequently switch from the irrelevant 99.9% to Adler’s evidence for God’s existence.

dhw: You have honestly admitted that your theories ultimately are based on irrational faith, and that is something I can accept. […] However, if you wish to enter into a debate about your God’s purposes, methods and nature, I would suggest that an analysis of life’s history might provide a more convincing, less self-contradictory starting point than an attempt to fit the history into your preconceived wishes.

DAVID: Nothing preconceived, but based on known facts with an analysis. I started agnostic.

But now, by your own admission, you “first choose a God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.”