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

by David Turell , Friday, April 23, 2021, 19:56 (1099 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 'Previously required' is a reference to the point every new stage of evolutionary complexity is built upon the past forms and biological processes.

dhw: We are in total agreement that all life forms except the first are descended from other life forms, and all life forms have to eat. Nothing whatsoever to do with your belief that every life form was specially designed as “part of the goal of evolving humans”. You have yet again edited out the illogical part of your theory.

Evolution with a giant bush of food energy for an eventual huge human population is fully logical when viewed by a logical mind keeping God's role in mind..

DAVID: Please stop humanizing God.

DAVID: Your confusions continues: All the terms I use are specifically meant as allegories. God is not human so human terms applied to him are special.

dhw: So when you “specifically” and “specially” say he had only one purpose, was always in control, knew in advance what was going to happen, is selfless, enjoys creating in his own way, and probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, do you not actually mean what you say? It’s all symbolic of…what?

It is symbolic of my knowing as I present those personal thoughts of mine about God, they allegorically imply His possible human comparisons, since He is not human and a person like no other person.

DAVID: There you go again. We don't know if God ever creates anything for His own enjoyment. Everything is done for His own reasons, presumably somehow for our benefit, since He bothered to create us. I can't go further but as in the past will offer guesses when you ask. Just don't overinterpret the ideas I give.

dhw: “There you go again.” We don’t even “know” if he exists. And yet you dare to presume it’s for our benefit, since he created us. You seem to have forgotten that in your theory he specially created every other life form as well. And this whole website revolves around different guesses concerning all the mysteries nobody has yet solved. And when you guess that your God designed all life forms for the sole purpose of designing humans and our food supply, I don’t know what there is to “overinterpret”, and I don’t know why you think it right to offer your humanized guesses about God’s intentions but somehow it’s pointless for me to offer alternatives to your own guesses on the grounds that we can’t “know” the truth.

DAVID: My current judgements about God and theism come from reading many books and articles as I started out at ground zero as a 'soft' agnostic, someone who hadn't thought about it much and His existence really didn't matter, until the question of whether it really mattered occurred to me as a decision I needed to research. I needed to come to some conclusion if what I found convinced me one way or the other. I had a neutral start, what about you?

dhw: I don’t know what this is meant to prove, but since you ask: I was brought up as a Liberal Jew, rebelled in my early teens and briefly became an atheist, was “converted” in my late teens to agnosticism by Darwin (an unusual twist, I know), read voraciously in my search for answers, but by my mid-twenties resigned myself to the fact that nobody knows any of the answers, no matter how eloquently they defend their beliefs. That does not stop me from wanting to know more – hence this website. In the early days (we started up 13 years ago), I learnt a lot from a lot of people, whereas today you are the only one of my “teachers” to have remained faithful all through! This I appreciate more than words can say. But as you will have gathered, despite the expansion of my knowledge, I still see no clear solution to any of the aforesaid mysteries!

I never really rebelled. I passively accepted a "Jewish father" role to raise my kids with a Jewish wife as reformed Jews. I never like Hewish liturgy as overfly repetitive of Biblical thought, without really answering any real questions. When I finally dug into it, the intricacies of living biochemistry appearing for no good natural reason, and opposite to you, no help from Darwin theory to provide some logic about evolutionary design, I realized God had to exist. Darwin didn't have to prove to me we evolved. That is obvious. Since the steps in evolution are so complex and obviously require design, it was an easy step. The explanation is satisfying as it makes sense.