If God exists, why did he create life? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, December 09, 2010, 09:36 (4881 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO-And so we come to man. Back in my teenage Darwin days, there was much talk of the "missing link". But if the Darwin/atheist/David scenario is correct, there has to be a chain all the way back from us to the first molecule, and that means millions of missing links. Can we ever hope to find them? Follow the experimentation scenario, and you don't need to find them. They don't even have to be there. If life began as a conscious experiment, the experimental scientist can conduct further experiments at will, including brand new inventions (e.g. sex, the senses) and refinements of old ones (e.g. an enlarged brain).-Whichever scenario we believe, man is here now, so what can God get out of us? David thinks that he has to keep himself hidden. I don't know why he has to, but I agree that he keeps himself hidden. From what I know of human history and myth, the tale is one of bloodshed, violence, disease and suffering that counterbalances and almost certainly outweighs the tale of love, beauty, happiness, joy. Perhaps God gets a little thrill of vanity when churchgoers praise him, but since they're just as likely to be killed by a terrorist bomb or a meteor or a conflagration in church as out of church, he clearly doesn't lift a divine finger. So what's he doing? As with the dinosaurs, presumably watching. Being entertained. It's such early days in our history (remember, he thinks in terms of billions) that I wouldn't expect him to have lost interest. Besides, if dinosaurs eating grass or one another kept him entertained for 160 million years, surely the variety of human activities should keep him hooked for at least as long.-And so I'm suggesting that if there is a God, he created life for his own entertainment. I'm also suggesting that part of the fun was experimentation, because most creative artists proceed by discovery, and would be bored if they knew exactly what was coming. This scenario explains all the major innovations, the variations on a theme, and the long delayed arrival of the human brain, which perhaps brings us as close as we can get to his "image". It also removes the need for theological convolutions over such matters as the source of evil, and it explains why God doesn't intervene any more, since we're making so many entertaining changes by ourselves. Life is just a film show. -Here, then, is the challenge: if you believe in the existence of God, and can disregard the ancient, man-made texts with their unsubstantiated stories of dialogues between God and humans, can you find anything in this scenario that contradicts your own experience and knowledge of the world?