Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Monday, March 01, 2021, 13:26 (1153 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I have no idea why God chose to use evolution, my statement you always distort as above. But using evolution every step is contingent upon past forms. Thus all past life forms were necessary to reach the human form.

dhw: That is an extraordinary conclusion, and the distortion is entirely yours. If God exists, then he chose to “use evolution”, and yes, common descent means that all forms are contingent upon past forms. But it does not mean that every life form is/was contingent upon every other life form that ever existed in the past! You might just as well tell us that ALL past life forms were necessary to reach the form of the duck-billed platypus! 99% of branches died out. So please tell us why every single one of those extinct branches – each one, according to you, directly designed by your God – was necessary for him to be able to design H. sapiens.

DAVID: Contingency!!!! required by the process of evolution.

Howling “contingency!!!” explains nothing. Please explain why your God’s direct design of humans was contingent upon his direct design of the brontosaurus. […]

dhw: The question is why, if his one and only goal was to evolve/design humans, he chose to directly design all the species that had no connection with humans.

I have cut the comments in between, because you still keep using the same tactic of dodging the question.

DAVID: Because He chose, for his own reasons, to evolve humans by design from a start with bacteria, it all makes perfect sense to me.

By “evolve” you mean directly design, and he chose to “evolve” EVERY life form from bacteria – not just humans – and the problem is WHY he chose to evolve all the life forms that had no connection with humans, if his one and only purpose was to evolve humans.

DAVID: Again, contingency is the key to evolution. What is a past form becomes a new form by modification as evolution proceeds forward accepting Darwin's premise of common descent.

An excellent description of how common descent works, and totally irrelevant to the question why your God designed all the life forms that had no connection with humans if his only goal was to design humans – or to put it another way, how does “contingency” come to mean that every single life form in the history of life was “part of the goal of evolving (= designing) humans”? You have no idea, and that is where this discussion should end.

Viruses

dhw: […] we only have theories. I have offered you one: that your God gave all life forms a mechanism with which to work out their own methods of survival in the free-for-all that has resulted in what we humans consider to be a mixture of “good” and “bad”. You can hardly deny that this fits the facts of life’s history. And I am still waiting to hear why you find it illogical, apart from the fact that it doesn’t fit your personal view of God, that he would not want to lose control, that there must be a “good” reason for his directly creating what we consider to be “bad”, and one day we shall find out what it is.

DAVID: I don't believe God ever hands off responsibility to lesser forms. Your humanized God is nothing like mine. […]

dhw: You have repeated that you don’t believe the “humanized” free-for-all theory, and I know you prefer your “humanized” always-in-control theory, and we might add that you can’t explain why your “humanized” God would create all the “bad” things, because your “humanization” of him implicitly makes him all “good”. Now, regardless of your subjective beliefs and disbeliefs, please explain why you find my theory illogical.

DAVID: There is no logic in our views of God. We all have theistic theories. My view of God is eons apart from yours. Note our discussion about God and time. Your very humanized God does logical things since your 'god' is so human.

Now apparently my view of God is illogical because he does logical things, and that “humanizes him”. And yet even when you try to wriggle out of your support for the possibility/probability that your God has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, you insist that he has logic like ours.