Return to David's theory of theodicy;Plantinga & Raup (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 19:12 (17 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:. If you now agree that your omniscient and omnipotent God wished to create a vast variety of forms extant and extinct, then quite clearly his one and only motive could not have been to create just the 0.1% which led to our current bush of life. [David's red]

DAVID: Yes, evolution is much messier than direct creation, BUT God chose to evolve us! The red quote is your usual twist. Your usual distain for human exceptionalism defines your response.

dhw: I have always acknowledged our exceptional powers.

Yes, grudgingly up to a point, when I force you. Adles uses those human powers to prove
God! Way beyond your usual approach.

dhw: This is your usual straw man attempt to divert attention from the fact that according to you, your God chose to evolve (= design) and then cull the vast variety of extinct life forms that had no connection with us and our food, and you have no idea why. But even you agree that he must have had a purpose for doing so, in which case the purpose cannot have been limited to producing us and our food.

God's purpose was to produce us, not as distorted by your weird take of Raup's statistical analysis of evolutionary extinctions. A required death of 99.9% produced all the 0.1% survivors now. Exactly as God planned: over eight billion dominant humans using all of the resources of the Earth. Nothing culled for no reason! Your reasoning is as woolly as ever.

Double standards

DAVID: Process and deist theologies are not mainstream, and not worth using. My view of God is mine, and just as valid as as any other.

dhw: This statement entails double standards, because your own view is equally non-mainstream. If you had given us a different reason for rejecting process and deist theologies, you would not have been using double standards.

That they are not mainstream is factual. But I've told you, please remember, I've studied both in detail, and still reject them. There is your acceptable reasoning.

DAVID: You continue your tortured philosophy of double standards. In theology no standards are established. I can pick and choose whatever I wish for my own reasons as I cobble together a theology of my own. Yes, I have reasons for my choice. Yes, you can call them standards. They allow me to pick and choose as I wish. You choose agnosticism with its safety in neutrality, no choices ever needed.

dhw: There is no “philosophy of double standards”, and it has nothing to do with our right to make choices. In such contexts, it is a term used to denote the use of a particular standard to attack an argument (deism is not mainstream) and then to defend one’s own argument although it violates the same standard (your panentheism and various other theories are not mainstream either). Please stop misusing language.

Your tenuous grip on double standards is an ego defense mechanism of yours to protect your agnosticism, a no-choice position. It is OK for you but do not apply it to me. I'll pick and choose for whatever reasons to create my own personal theology.