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

by dhw, Monday, April 12, 2021, 11:37 (1111 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If your God gave us free will, it means he deliberately gave up control. If he is prepared to give up control over human behaviour for whatever reason, who is to say that he is not prepared to give up control over evolution for whatever reason?

DAVID: A weak take: the only control He gave up was over behaviour, not the direction of evolution.

dhw: You insist on missing the point. Do you regard your God’s giving up control over behaviour as “weak”? If so, why? If not, why not? And if he WANTED to give up control over evolution, why is that “weak”? The fact that you believe he controlled everything else does not make your belief into a fact, although you state it as if it were.

DAVID: You are fuzzy. God's job is running evolution to suit His specific goals. It requires exact control, which He would not give up granting that He is creating with purpose. Our having free will has no effect on the desired direction of evolution.

And if his specific goal or purpose is to create a free-for-all, then he will deliberately give up control. Just as according to you he has given up control over the human will.

DAVID: Don't you realize the appearance of humans requires very special design of the brain? Much more control not less. Your namby-pamby God just reappeared.

dhw: Don’t you realize that the appearance of dogs requires very special design of the nose? And don’t you realize that every form of life, including the single cell, requires very special design? Of course you do – that is your most potent argument for the existence of your God. Yes, our brain is special, and so is the dog’s nose, and so is the weaverbird’s nest. And there is nothing namby-pamby about a God who may have designed a system which in turn can produce every special feature of every special life form and every special natural wonder in the history of life on Earth.

DAVID: Our brain is very special because of its special form with very large frontal lobes for abstract thought.

Indeed it is. Please read my reply, now bolded.

DAVID: His whole personage must be viewed symbolically. His form of enjoyment may not be exactly like our personal experience.

dhw: What is enjoyment a symbol of? The rest of your post repeats the same dodge. You say you are sure your God enjoys creating, and your God probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, and I'm sorry, but I have no idea how such statements can be regarded as allegorical or symbolic, and you obviously can’t explain to me what else these statements can possibly stand for, other than what they say. [...]

DAVID: We are so apart we will never meet in the middle. It is why you don't understand your humanized God. Every time I apply a term to God's possible thoughts or attitudes, I think of it in an allegorical meaning, since God is not a human person, and an exact application of the term's human meaning may not fully apply to Him. That proviso always applies.

But you won’t/can’t tell us what “enjoyment” and “thought patterns and emotions similar to ours” might symbolize! You say our concept of enjoyment may not “fully apply to him”, so when you say you are sure he enjoys creating, do you actually mean you think he doesn’t enjoy creating? Of course you don’t. How about this then, for a theory: You are sure that in his own way your God enjoys creating, and therefore it is possible that he created life because he wanted to create something which in his own way he could enjoy? Better now?