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

by David Turell , Monday, April 19, 2021, 17:45 (1104 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your confused view of evolution as chopped in segments continues. There is a continuous flow from one early step to the next more advanced stage.

dhw: There is no chopping and there is no continuous flow. The bush of life diversified into vast numbers of different branches, which continued for millions of years to diversify into new different branches. Why are you now hiding behind generalizations, when the theory which is under attack is your blinkered insistence that every single life form on every single branch of the great bush (plus food supply, plus lifestyle, plus strategy, plus natural wonder) was specially designed by your God as “part of the goal of evolving humans”?

God designed all stages of evolution to reach the most complex form of all, the human brain. The huge bush of life is required to give the required food supply. All must eat.

DAVID: The azhdarchid pterosaur had some DNA similar to ours, so we work with similar genome codes, so explain how you manage to believe in common descent if we can't have some relationship?

dhw: ALL cellular life has DNA! How does that come to mean that your God specially designed every single branch of cellular life “as part of the goal of evolving [=specially designing] humans”? Please stop all this silly dodging.

I'm not dodging. I believe God did it, and you don't. Why are you continuously dodging God?

DAVID: The bold does not necessarily follow. The difference must be consistently recognized. Any similarity to our thinking must stay at the level of a possible presumption and seen always as allegorical.

dhw: If you say his interests “may not” be like ours, then you are implicitly acknowledging that they may be – and that is all I ask of you. “Possible presumption” is meaningless, since “presumption” means something you already believe is true. The theory must stay at the level of possibility, since no one can actually know. “Allegorical” is meaningless unless you can tell us what God’s way of thinking symbolizes.

What is meaningless is that we cannot know His exact thoughts So we must accept that we must use allegory or symbolism when inferring what se think His thoughts might be.

DAVID: Of course we must use our terms. There are no others. The God you describe is not sure of Himself, experimenting, wanting free-for-all to advance evolution from one lower stage to a higher one, no goal in sight. It is not the terms we both use, it is your giving God your humanized thinking applied to him.

dhw: Good – that gets rid of your “allegorical” obfuscation. I reject two of your interpretations of my alternatives: 1) I have never said he is not sure of himself. I not regard experimentation or having new ideas as signs of psychological insecurity.

Experimentation says testing out a new approach or alternatives. This certainly implies a weak God who not sure of His next step and has to try out various approaches. Maybe He tried out several different universes until He got to the appropriate fine-tuned one. Not my God. who knows exactly what He is doing and what goals He has in mind. And unlike your constant humanizing guesses as to His reasoning, I don't guess reasons, I accept His results.

dhw: 2) I have no doubt that if God exists, he had a purpose in creating life, and you have never explained why you think that although he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, he could not possibly create things in order to give himself something to enjoy and be interested in. Meanwhile, you totally ignore my point that your own view of God is every bit as humanized as my various alternatives.

Same humanizing. God does not need entertainment or enjoyment of His creations. He is the business of creation, nothing more. That He may have feelings about what He does is known only to Him. We can try to make humanizing guesses, all of which are allegorical from the start. Remember we humans always try to satisfy ourselves, while God is selfless.