Evolution v Creationism (Part II Responses) (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, September 22, 2014, 13:46 (3497 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
edited by dhw, Monday, September 22, 2014, 13:52

DHW: Correct me if I'm wrong: you advocate separate creation, and argue that life's history is geared to the purpose of creating humans to be “stewards” of the earth. The millions of species that he created separately and then killed off were necessary for him to achieve this purpose. -TONY: Yes, you are mistaken. I never claimed that everything was created towards the purpose of creating humans. Humanity was created for a purpose, that of being stewards of the Earth. Everything else also has a purpose. Most of the time it is simply maintaining homeostasis by serving as an resource source/drain/ converter/preserver, but other times it is as an active participant in the development of the world. Humanity was seen as the crowning achievement, not the end goal. That type of racial narcissism is a frustrating side effect of humanities inability to see beyond their own narrow existence.-First of all, my apologies for the mistake. I thought you shared David's anthropocentric view of life's history, and am delighted to hear that you share my scepticism. Nevertheless, I'm puzzled. “Humanity was seen as the crowning achievement.” You are always careful with your choice of words. Seen by whom? God? If God sees humans as his crowning achievement, presumably there is nothing greater to come. But if his purpose in creating life was not to create humans, and everything else has a purpose of its own, what non-human development of the world do you think he has in mind? I had always thought that the Bible, which some believers consider to be the Word of God, focused almost entirely on humans, and that Christians thought God had deliberately sent Jesus to save the souls of humans, whom he had specially created, complete with their free will to choose between good and evil. I find it almost a relief to hear that Jesus was sent, not to save our souls, but to make sure we the “caretakers” preserve homeostasis and actively help the world to develop. Presumably then, if we fail we'll kill ourselves off, or he'll do it for us as he did with the dinosaurs, but it won't matter because the salvation of individual humans is irrelevant: homeostasis and the development of the world are the purpose, and he should have no trouble achieving those aims without us.
 
TONY: The creation of humanity likely would not have required the Trilobite. However, I should point out that even the human body is not purely human. Other life forms were required to create even the most multi-cellular organism, much less humanity. -Thank you. My question is now irrelevant since I misunderstood what you regarded as the purpose of life. -Of course other life forms were required to build other organisms. That is the point of evolution. Whereas separate creation by definition does not require other life forms.-TONY: All of that being said, the rebuttal of your extremely narrow question is, "What happens after a human is created without all the precursor world building event?" Creating a human with no air to breath, food to eat, ground to stand on, water to drink, or any of the millions of other things that we need to live would have been foolish. That is why your question is unscientific.-My point all along has been that the conditions for humans did not require the special creation and destruction of, for instance, the trilobite. You have answered this, first by saying humans were not the goal, and later by saying that trilobites had their own purpose in keeping the oceans clean (we could do with having them back!). Now you seem to be saying that God was specifically preparing the world for humans, which makes it sound as if they were his goal. Perhaps this will all become clear if you tell us what you mean by "the development of the world", and what you think really is God's "end goal". 
 
TONY: When you stop looking at humans as a separate end goal, things are much easier to reason on.-I agree 100%. That's what I keep telling David. It makes the course of evolution so much easier to understand!