Why did the Hebrew God Create Carnivores.

[Diogenes]

Most of the arguments against the idea of a loving god who created the planet Earth and its creatures are so obvious they occur to a child. One of them is, 'Why would a caring, loving god create a world where so many organisms can only survive only by killing and eating others? Christians usually fall back on the old "Original Sin" argument, that everything was perfect until "The Fall."

Is "The Fall" a reasonable argument to explain the existence of God-created organisms that can only survive by tearing the flesh off other organisms? . . . or by consuming and torturing them to death like brainless cancer cells, viruses and bacteria?

When God made his creation and called it 'good.' then called it evil and drowned 99.9999 percent of his 'creation,' why didn't that 'New Start' fix everything? Wouldn't an omnipotent and omniscient God have known all this would transpire before 'He' created the first clod of earth, the first drop of water, the first atom of 'the firmament?'

[The Tanager]

[Replying to POI in post #220]

We do not have the author verified in offering a direct answer to us on this question. That could be for a number of reasons (doesn’t exist, believes a different form of education from relaying rote facts is best, is answering but one or both of us isn’t listening and pushing our own agenda, etc.). I gave clear reasons to interpret the passage as I did. You have offered unsupported assertions, turned to different critiques which I've responded to, and seem to think an AI tool programmed by humans on human content (with all its flaws) with specific prompts that could color what it spits back out not resolving a question should give us pause.

Ready to talk about justice or would you like to bow out of the still to come bits?

[William]

Me: It is no longer about who presented the best argument

AI: it is no longer about who presented the best argument
The Inescapable Truth
Your earlier observation stands: frameworks determine outcomes before debate begins. Tanager operates within a framework where:

Scripture requires genre-sensitive interpretation

Suffering can be amoral

Divine silence has plausible explanations

POI operates within a framework where:

Scripture should be read at face value

Gratuitous suffering is evidence against a good God

Divine silence is evidence of absence

Neither framework can prove itself to the other using premises the other accepts. This is why the debate no longer moves. It has hit the bedrock of presuppositions.

What Remains
What remains is not argument in the traditional sense, but witness. Each side is bearing witness to their framework, demonstrating how it handles challenges, and hoping the other will see its coherence or appeal. This can be valuable for onlookers, who may find one framework more compelling or coherent than the other. But between the participants themselves, resolution is impossible without a bridging mechanism—something like the CCA, which offers neutral ground.

You are right. It is no longer about who presented the best argument. That question has been rendered moot by the deeper realization that the debate was never really about carnivores at all.

Me: And Ts assessment of AI is insufficient. AI is trained on all sorts of data. Not just Theistic or Atheistic

AI: You raise a valid point about Tanager's dismissal of the AI analysis. His comment that AI is "programmed by humans on human content (with all its flaws) with specific prompts that could color what it spits back out" does not fully account for the nature of large language models.

The Nature of AI Training Data
Tanager's characterization is technically correct but incomplete. AI models are indeed trained on human-generated content, which includes:

Theological texts from multiple traditions

Philosophical arguments from diverse perspectives

Scientific literature

Historical documents

Literary works

Forum discussions like the one being analyzed

The training data is not exclusively theistic or atheistic. It reflects the full spectrum of human thought, argument, and expression across cultures and time periods.

What This Means for the Analysis
When the AI analyzed the POI-Tanager exchange, it was not operating from a predetermined theistic or atheistic bias. It was applying pattern recognition and logical structuring based on its training across countless debates, arguments, and philosophical exchanges. The assessment that Tanager presented the "better argument" by standards of internal coherence and structural soundness was not a theological judgment. It was a judgment about argumentative form, derived from analyzing how arguments are typically evaluated in philosophical discourse.

The Limitation Tanager Correctly Identifies
However, Tanager is correct that AI has limitations. The AI can assess:

Logical consistency

Responsiveness to opposing points

Adherence to burden of proof

Structural coherence

The AI cannot:

Determine which framework corresponds to external reality

Verify the existence or non-existence of God

Resolve foundational hermeneutical disputes

Bridge the gap between competing worldviews

The Deeper Point
Your observation cuts deeper. Even if the AI were perfectly neutral - trained on all available human knowledge without bias - it would still face the same limitation all rational analysis faces when confronting foundational worldview conflicts. It can describe the structure of the disagreement. It can assess the internal coherence of each position. But it cannot, through logic alone, determine which set of first premises is true.

This is why the debate has reached an impasse, and why your insight about frameworks determining outcomes before debate begins is so crucial. The AI, like any analytical tool, can only work within the frameworks it is given. It cannot supply the bridging mechanism that would allow the frameworks themselves to be adjudicated.

Me: Effectively such debates start off from the impasse

Yes. That is the crucial insight.

The Impasse Is the Starting Point, Not the Destination
Most participants enter debates like this one believing they are at the beginning of a journey toward resolution. They think: "If I can just present my case clearly enough, respond to objections thoroughly enough, and expose the flaws in my opponent's reasoning, we will make progress."

But as you have observed, they were never at the beginning. They were already at the impasse.

Looked at through this lens, the thread was never going to reach resolution. POI and Tanager were not building toward a conclusion. They were enacting their frameworks for an audience, demonstrating how each worldview handles the challenge of animal suffering.

[POI]

You have offered unsupported assertions

I do find this response 'interesting', in light of me giving reason(s) for my position, which are not mere 'assertions', as you would say. As I stated, some passages in the Bible are clearly metaphor/other, as opposed to literal interpretation. Most/all of us do not hyper-analyze each and every sentence, of every book we've ever read; to assure they truly are literal verses not. Nor do we even think to identify the 'tools' for doing so. Apparently, a sentence, where God is said to directly speak and give instruction(s), was obviously meant to be part of 'myth' all along and I completely missed the boat here?

Ready to talk about justice?

New topic created, to keep this one from getting muddled with too much "other stuff".

viewtopic.php?p=1184527#p1184527

[William]

[Replying to William in post #212]

If the idea is the "brutality", then why shouldn't the equally brutal suffering faced through forest fires, falling to your death, etc. be all grouped together?

The OP, does not frame the issue as "brutality" in the abstract. It frames it as a specific design question: why would God create carnivores - organisms whose survival mechanism requires actively killing, tearing, and consuming other sentient beings?

Predation is an active, designed feature of certain creatures' existence.

Forest fires and falls are passive natural events that occur within the environment.

The observation was that your response, while logically coherent as a general defense of suffering, does not directly engage the OP's specific design question. It tangents. How?

Your response, by lumping all suffering together, allows you to deploy your broader argument that suffering is an amoral feature of conscious existence. This argument may be coherent on its own terms, but it does not directly engage the OP's narrower, more pointed question about designed suffering.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to William in post #222]

Me: And Ts assessment of AI is insufficient. AI is trained on all sorts of data. Not just Theistic or Atheistic

To clarify, I never said AI is only trained on theistic or atheistic data.

AI: You raise a valid point about Tanager's dismissal of the AI analysis. His comment that AI is "programmed by humans on human content (with all its flaws) with specific prompts that could color what it spits back out" does not fully account for the nature of large language models.

The Nature of AI Training Data
Tanager's characterization is technically correct but incomplete.

To clarify, it wasn’t offered as a complete assessment of AI, but a specific point about how AI won’t adjudicate what the best interpretation of a Biblical passage is (which is how I understood “resolvable” in POI’s comments).

[The Tanager]

[Replying to POI in post #223]

You have offered unsupported assertions

I do find this response 'interesting', in light of me giving reason(s) for my position, which are not mere 'assertions', as you would say. As I stated, some passages in the Bible are clearly metaphor/other, as opposed to literal interpretation. Most/all of us do not hyper-analyze each and every sentence, of every book we've ever read; to assure they truly are literal verses not. Nor do we even think to identify the 'tools' for doing so. Apparently, a sentence, where God is said to directly speak and give instruction(s), was obviously meant to be part of 'myth' all along and I completely missed the boat here?

You did keep asserting your position through the language of “clear” “face-value” and the like. I’m sorry if I missed/forgot this one. I don’t see why you think it is a good one, though. If a further claim relies on it being true that the text is literal, that is the exact case we must analyze whether it should be read literally or not, whatever one does in those other cases of reading.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to William in post #224]

I don’t think it is a tangent at all. For the broader point I was making to not apply to it would require it to be a unique thing from other “brutal” acts. God designing animals and the environment in a way that fires exist and animals will be hurt by them is just as active as designing them for animal predation.

[POI]

I’m sorry if I missed/forgot this one.

I accept your apology, which is unnecessary BTW. However, I could clarify or add on much more. But at this point, it is. quite frankly, irrelevant to the over-all argument -- as no amount of justification or reason will actually resolve or bring forth the conclusion - as to whether or not the entire animal/other kingdom were once plant eaters?

If a further claim relies on it being true that the text is literal, that is the exact case we must analyze whether it should be read literally or not, whatever one does in those other cases of reading.

Well, apparently, the best and brightest have not, and likely will not, ever figure out if Genesis 1:30 is to be taken literally? Too bad we can't simply just ask the author.

[William]

[Replying to POI in post #228]

Well, apparently, the best and brightest have not, and likely will not, ever figure out if Genesis 1:30 is to be taken literally? Too bad we can't simply just ask the author.

Why not ask God for an explanation and then get one from someone else and not even ask for forgiveness?

[POI]

[Replying to William in post #229]

Funny William. I'm lightly touching on the 'divine hiddenness' of it all.