Watching asteroids - AgnosticWeb.com

This was a tiny one, but we don't want to be dinosaurs, so we must map the biggies:-
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=astronomers-catch-video-of-near-miss-asteroid&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20120622

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We are on the alert for big ones, most already seen by telescopes:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2122612-the-greatest-danger-asteroids-pose-to-us-i...

"Wind kills. The most casualties from an asteroid impact won’t come from the impact itself. The wind, pressure and heat caused by the crash are far more dangerous, no matter where the asteroid hits.

***

"As an asteroid hurtles towards the ground, it deposits a huge amount of energy into the atmosphere, resulting in a powerful shockwave, tornado-like winds and a plume of fire trailing behind it. When it crashes down, it forms a crater, shaking the ground around the impact and hurling debris into the air.

"If the asteroid hits water (which is twice as likely as hitting land), it would create a tsunami, with waves reaching dozens of metres high. The farther from shore the impact is, the deeper the water and the taller the waves.

***

“What sets tsunamis apart is that they’re really the most far-reaching effect of all the impact effects,” says Rumpf. A pressure wave or heat plume can’t travel very far, and craters only form right at the impact site, but tsunamis can traverse hundreds of kilometres of ocean to hit coastal communities.

"A tsunami caused by the impact of a 200-metre-wide asteroid 130 kilometres off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, for example, could cause more than 50,000 deaths, with 75 per cent of those being directly caused by the tsunami and the rest due to high winds.
But an asteroid over or in a city would kill millions. Most of those deaths would be due to wind as well, even if the asteroid did crash to the ground instead of exploding in the air.

"For an airburst, about 15 per cent of casualties would come from heat. In a direct impact, the effects of gusting wind and surging temperatures are joined by pressure waves, which can rupture internal organs.

"Only about 3 per cent of casualties would be caused by the actual impact or the earthquakes and debris that result, says the team. The group plans to discuss the results with disaster managers to come up with suggestions for preparedness.

"Luckily, large asteroids don’t hit Earth often: an impact by a 200-metre asteroid is expected only once every 40,000 years. And an asteroid could fall anywhere, and most of the planet’s surface is unpopulated.

“'Chances are that an asteroid hits the water, and even if it hits land it’s much more likely that it will hit away from populated regions,” says Rumpf. “These are very rare events, but with potentially high consequences.”

"In case you are starting to worry, there are lots of projects dedicated to planetary defence against asteroids: telescopes have spotted most of the big ones, and there are several potential ways to avoid an asteroid impact if we see it coming.

“'We are in the business of detecting asteroids well in advance of an impact, so this kind of work is only really important if we totally fail to do our jobs,” says Erik Christensen, director of the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona."

Comment: I'm glad we are on watch. Obviously God could not control this danger.

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DAVID’s comment: I'm glad we are on watch. Obviously God could not control this danger.

Obviously? This is an astonishing conclusion, and another example of “skewed” (your word) thought patterns. You believe that your God created the universe and everything in it, is always in tight control, but is incapable of controlling asteroids. And yet there have been several occasions when you have decided that he does control the environment, and even organized Chixculub. Either he can or he can’t control the environment, and that includes asteroids.

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DAVID’s comment: I'm glad we are on watch. Obviously God could not control this danger.

dhw: Obviously? This is an astonishing conclusion, and another example of “skewed” (your word) thought patterns. You believe that your God created the universe and everything in it, is always in tight control, but is incapable of controlling asteroids. And yet there have been several occasions when you have decided that he does control the environment, and even organized Chixculub. Either he can or he can’t control the environment, and that includes asteroids.

It was Gerald Schroeder who wondered whether God hurled Chicxulub. I've quoted him, and agreed there is no way of knowing. Why are you surprised at my conclusion about God's powers? He could have cleared out the steroids, but didn't. They are dangerous but perhaps necessary in the evolution of the solar system with its very special Earth.
Therefore, either God could not control them or felt He shouldn't interfere with the process of solar system evolution He started. However, I must be agnostic about His powers. He may well not be able to exert full control.

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DAVID’s comment: I'm glad we are on watch. Obviously God could not control this danger.

dhw: Obviously? This is an astonishing conclusion, and another example of “skewed” (your word) thought patterns. You believe that your God created the universe and everything in it, is always in tight control, but is incapable of controlling asteroids. And yet there have been several occasions when you have decided that he does control the environment, and even organized Chixculub. Either he can or he can’t control the environment, and that includes asteroids.

DAVID: It was Gerald Schroeder who wondered whether God hurled Chicxulub. I've quoted him, and agreed there is no way of knowing. Why are you surprised at my conclusion about God's powers? He could have cleared out the steroids, but didn't. They are dangerous but perhaps necessary in the evolution of the solar system with its very special Earth.
Therefore, either God could not control them or felt He shouldn't interfere with the process of solar system evolution He started. However, I must be agnostic about His powers. He may well not be able to exert full control.

So when you say “obviously God could not control this danger”, you actually mean you don’t know whether God could control this danger. And so you don’t know whether God can/does control all the environmental conditions that have influenced evolution. But what apparently you do know is that whether or not he could/did control the environment that influenced evolution, he could and did control every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder because they were all necessary to keep life going until he could fulfil his purpose of producing humans, because apparently you do know precisely what your God was thinking when he created the universe and Planet Earth. If you are agnostic about his powers, then perhaps you should remain agnostic about his intentions – especially since you cannot reconcile your view of his intentions with the history of his creations.

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DAVID: Therefore, either God could not control them or felt He shouldn't interfere with the process of solar system evolution He started. However, I must be agnostic about His powers. He may well not be able to exert full control.[/i]

dhw: So when you say “obviously God could not control this danger”, you actually mean you don’t know whether God could control this danger. And so you don’t know whether God can/does control all the environmental conditions that have influenced evolution.

The dangerous asteroids are there. The real issue as above is are they needed for the solar system to work as it evolved? We don't have the answer, which would help us decide about God's powers.

dhw: But what apparently you do know is that whether or not he could/did control the environment that influenced evolution, he could and did control every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder because they were all necessary to keep life going until he could fulfil his purpose of producing humans, because apparently you do know precisely what your God was thinking when he created the universe and Planet Earth. If you are agnostic about his powers, then perhaps you should remain agnostic about his intentions – especially since you cannot reconcile your view of his intentions with the history of his creations.

If I'm convinced that He wanted to produce humans, it all makes sense to me. That He used evolutionary processes is obvious to me. Which means apparently He had to. He began the universe which then evolved. He created life which then evolved. That is a pattern for God's methods. He chose them because He couldn't do direct creation as the Bible suggests in Genesis. That is a reasonable thought.

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DAVID: Therefore, either God could not control them or felt He shouldn't interfere with the process of solar system evolution He started. However, I must be agnostic about His powers. He may well not be able to exert full control.
dhw: So when you say “obviously God could not control this danger”, you actually mean you don’t know whether God could control this danger. And so you don’t know whether God can/does control all the environmental conditions that have influenced evolution.
DAVID: The dangerous asteroids are there. The real issue as above is are they needed for the solar system to work as it evolved? We don't have the answer, which would help us decide about God's powers.

It’s pleasing to see your rapid conversion from the “obvious” limitations of God’s powers to an “agnostic” we don’t know if or to what degree your God’s powers are limited.

dhw: But what apparently you do know is that whether or not he could/did control the environment that influenced evolution, he could and did control every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder because they were all necessary to keep life going until he could fulfil his purpose of producing humans, because apparently you do know precisely what your God was thinking when he created the universe and Planet Earth. If you are agnostic about his powers, then perhaps you should remain agnostic about his intentions – especially since you cannot reconcile your view of his intentions with the history of his creations.
DAVID: If I'm convinced that He wanted to produce humans, it all makes sense to me. That He used evolutionary processes is obvious to me. Which means apparently He had to. He began the universe which then evolved. He created life which then evolved. That is a pattern for God's methods. He chose them because He couldn't do direct creation as the Bible suggests in Genesis. That is a reasonable thought.

A strange idea of “choice” if you the creator of All That Is “have to” do this and can’t do that. Since we both believe that evolution took place, of course your God (if he exists) both designed and used the evolutionary process. However, although your concept of evolutionary dabbling differs from the biblical one of separate creation of species, it is still nothing less than “direct” creation, simply using existing organisms and changing them into something new. According to you, he either preprogrammed or dabbled (directly created) every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution, until at last he could dabble the human brain. This originally did not make sense to you, but now you have hit on the explanation: suddenly, he who until just a few days ago was always in tight control (one of your reasons for rejecting the concept of the autonomous IM has always been that your God would NOT sacrifice his tight control) is forced to design all of this because owing to circumstances which he created but which are beyond his control, he is simply incapable of doing what he set out to do, i.e. dabble the human brain, until the year X. And it was his choice to make himself incapable of doing it any other way.

For further convolutions and contradictions, see “Evolution took a long time”.

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DAVID: If I'm convinced that He wanted to produce humans, it all makes sense to me. That He used evolutionary processes is obvious to me. Which means apparently He had to. He began the universe which then evolved. He created life which then evolved. That is a pattern for God's methods. He chose them because He couldn't do direct creation as the Bible suggests in Genesis. That is a reasonable thought.

dhw: A strange idea of “choice” if you the creator of All That Is “have to” do this and can’t do that. Since we both believe that evolution took place, of course your God (if he exists) both designed and used the evolutionary process. However, although your concept of evolutionary dabbling differs from the biblical one of separate creation of species, it is still nothing less than “direct” creation, simply using existing organisms and changing them into something new. According to you, he either preprogrammed or dabbled (directly created) every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution, until at last he could dabble the human brain. This originally did not make sense to you, but now you have hit on the explanation: suddenly, he who until just a few days ago was always in tight control (one of your reasons for rejecting the concept of the autonomous IM has always been that your God would NOT sacrifice his tight control) is forced to design all of this because owing to circumstances which he created but which are beyond his control, he is simply incapable of doing what he set out to do, i.e. dabble the human brain, until the year X. And it was his choice to make himself incapable of doing it any other way.

For further convolutions and contradictions, see “Evolution took a long time”.

You extrapolate my suppositions beyond all recognition, which is fun in a debate but does not truly explore the intent of my thinking which is expressed above. I've never changed as you imply. I have always recognized the God might have limits, but He always uses an evolutionary process and keeps as tight control as He can. I don't know that He chose to be incapable; your phrase came from what thought? He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.

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DAVID: If I'm convinced that He wanted to produce humans, it all makes sense to me. That He used evolutionary processes is obvious to me. Which means apparently He had to. He began the universe which then evolved. He created life which then evolved. That is a pattern for God's methods. He chose them because He couldn't do direct creation as the Bible suggests in Genesis. That is a reasonable thought.
dhw: […] According to you, he either preprogrammed or dabbled (directly created) every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution, until at last he could dabble the human brain. This originally did not make sense to you, but now you have hit on the explanation: suddenly, he who until just a few days ago was always in tight control (one of your reasons for rejecting the concept of the autonomous IM has always been that your God would NOT sacrifice his tight control) is forced to design all of this because owing to circumstances which he created but which are beyond his control, he is simply incapable of doing what he set out to do, i.e. dabble the human brain, until the year X. And it was his choice to make himself incapable of doing it any other way.
DAVID: You extrapolate my suppositions beyond all recognition, which is fun in a debate but does not truly explore the intent of my thinking which is expressed above. I've never changed as you imply. I have always recognized the God might have limits, but He always uses an evolutionary process and keeps as tight control as He can. I don't know that He chose to be incapable; your phrase came from what thought? He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.

So why did you say he “chose” the method, if it was forced on him by the laws he himself had created? Either he chose it or he didn’t choose it.

However, since you and I believe that evolution happened, i.e. life began with comparatively simple forms and evolved into forms that are more complex, it is fair enough to assume from a theistic viewpoint that God did choose that method. It is not fair enough to assume that right from the start he was forced by the laws he himself created to design millions of non-human organisms, a system of indiscriminate natural disasters and diseases, and a continual succession of comings and goings before he was finally able to get what he wanted with a dabble, which he couldn’t have done earlier. All of these convolutions spring from your one basic premise that he started out with the purpose of producing humans. If you now think that your God, who created the universe and life from scratch, can be that limited, why can’t you accept that there is an alternative possibility: namely, that he actually got precisely what he wanted in the way he wanted it, i.e. the ever changing and unpredictable spectacle of life’s history as we know it, maybe with dabbled humans as the most recent and most interesting part of the show?

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DAVID: You extrapolate my suppositions beyond all recognition, which is fun in a debate but does not truly explore the intent of my thinking which is expressed above. I've never changed as you imply. I have always recognized the God might have limits, but He always uses an evolutionary process and keeps as tight control as He can. I don't know that He chose to be incapable; your phrase came from what thought? He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.

dhw: So why did you say he “chose” the method, if it was forced on him by the laws he himself had created? Either he chose it or he didn’t choose it.

However, since you and I believe that evolution happened, i.e. life began with comparatively simple forms and evolved into forms that are more complex, it is fair enough to assume from a theistic viewpoint that God did choose that method. It is not fair enough to assume that right from the start he was forced by the laws he himself created to design millions of non-human organisms, a system of indiscriminate natural disasters and diseases, and a continual succession of comings and goings before he was finally able to get what he wanted with a dabble, which he couldn’t have done earlier. All of these convolutions spring from your one basic premise that he started out with the purpose of producing humans.

Getting to humans looks like His purpose because the odds are so enormously large against a chance appearance of humans. The only method He chose was evolution as the source of universe, Earth and humans. I don't know if He was limited to that method by what He created. You are supposing that and creating convolutions.

dhw:If you now think that your God, who created the universe and life from scratch, can be that limited, why can’t you accept that there is an alternative possibility: namely, that he actually got precisely what he wanted in the way he wanted it, i.e. the ever changing and unpredictable spectacle of life’s history as we know it, maybe with dabbled humans as the most recent and most interesting part of the show?

Your supposed limitations again. We don't know if He has any limits at all. He could be all-powerful per the Bible. The asteroids might have been required as I observed. And you are humanizing Him again. I don't know He needed an entertaining show.

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I have challenged David’s hypothesis that God wanted humans from the beginning but designed every life form and style and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain, or until pre-humans were able to switch on their 3.8-billion-year-old brain-enlargement programme.

DAVID (on Wednesday March 1): I have always recognized that God might have limits, but He always uses an evolutionary process and keeps as tight control as He can. ...He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: If you now think that your God, who created the universe and life from scratch, can be that limited, why can’t you accept that there is an alternative possibility: namely, that he actually got precisely what he wanted in the way he wanted it, i.e. the ever changing and unpredictable spectacle of life’s history as we know it, maybe with dabbled humans as the most recent and most interesting part of the show?[/i]
DAVID (on Friday 3 March): Your supposed limitations again. We don't know if He has any limits at all. He could be all-powerful per the Bible. (dhw’s bold)

They are not MY supposed limitations! Your God’s limited powers were YOUR explanation for why he couldn’t dabble humans earlier and had to design everything else in order to keep life going! So one moment you suggest that his powers may be limited, and the next moment you suggest that his powers may not be limited, which does away with your attempt to explain the otherwise to you non-sensical anthropocentric hypothesis! My own alternative proposal outlined above does not impose any limitations whatsoever. Your objection to this reverts to:
DAVID: And you are humanizing Him again. I don't know He needed an entertaining show.

I did not say that he needed it but that he wanted it, just as you say he wanted to create humans. It is impossible to discuss your God’s intentions without humanizing him, as you have discovered in your own attempts to explain why he wanted to produce humans. But of course we don’t “know”. We are simply trying to find an explanation that fits the history of life, and your own makes no sense to you unless you impose limitations on your God’s powers.

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DAVID (on Friday 3 March): Your supposed limitations again. We don't know if He has any limits at all. He could be all-powerful per the Bible. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: They are not MY supposed limitations! Your God’s limited powers were YOUR explanation for why he couldn’t dabble humans earlier and had to design everything else in order to keep life going!

What I have clearly said is God has chosen to use evolutionary methods for the universe, for the Earth and for life. That does not indicate He has any limits. Where I have definitely suggested limits are the asteroids as they may be necessary

dhw: So one moment you suggest that his powers may be limited, and the next moment you suggest that his powers may not be limited, which does away with your attempt to explain the otherwise to you non-sensical anthropocentric hypothesis! My own alternative proposal outlined above does not impose any limitations whatsoever.

I'm sorry I've confused you. My stance is expressed clearly above. Your no limitation approach might never arrived at humans.

Your objection to this reverts to:

DAVID: And you are humanizing Him again. I don't know He needed an entertaining show.

dhw: I did not say that he needed it but that he wanted it, just as you say he wanted to create humans. It is impossible to discuss your God’s intentions without humanizing him, as you have discovered in your own attempts to explain why he wanted to produce humans. But of course we don’t “know”. We are simply trying to find an explanation that fits the history of life, and your own makes no sense to you unless you impose limitations on your God’s powers.

There is a giant difference. We don't know why He wanted humans. That seems to be His purpose and as a person like no other person it does not make Him human. Wanting entertainment is human. And finally I have no idea whether He is limited. I make perfect sense to me, point after point.

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DAVID (on Friday 3 March): Your supposed limitations again. We don't know if He has any limits at all. He could be all-powerful per the Bible. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: They are not MY supposed limitations! Your God’s limited powers were YOUR explanation for why he couldn’t dabble humans earlier and had to design everything else in order to keep life going!
DAVID: What I have clearly said is God has chosen to use evolutionary methods for the universe, for the Earth and for life. That does not indicate He has any limits. Where I have definitely suggested limits are the asteroids as they may be necessary.

Once again you make clear statements and then retract them. Here is my statement and your reply::
dhw: (Feb.: 28) But what apparently you do know is that whether or not he could/did control the environment that influenced evolution, he could and did control every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder because they were all necessary to keep life going until he could fulfil his purpose of producing humans…
DAVID: If I'm convinced that He wanted to produce humans, it all makes sense to me. That He used evolutionary processes is obvious to me. Which means apparently He had to. He began the universe which then evolved. He created life which then evolved. That is a pattern for God's methods. He chose them because He couldn't do direct creation as the Bible suggests in Genesis. (dhw’s bold)

If in order to produce humans he had to use the roundabout method you impose on him and couldn’t do direct creation, he was limited.

DAVID: I'm sorry I've confused you. My stance is expressed clearly above. Your no limitation approach might never arrived at humans.

My theistic approach does not involve God having limitations or having no limitations, and allows for him dabbling. It focuses on the actual history of evolution and tries to extrapolate God’s possible intentions.

Dhw: Your objection to this reverts to:
DAVID: And you are humanizing Him again. I don't know He needed an entertaining show.
dhw: I did not say that he needed it but that he wanted it, just as you say he wanted to create humans. It is impossible to discuss your God’s intentions without humanizing him, as you have discovered in your own attempts to explain why he wanted to produce humans. But of course we don’t “know”. We are simply trying to find an explanation that fits the history of life, and your own makes no sense to you unless you impose limitations on your God’s powers.
DAVID: There is a giant difference. We don't know why He wanted humans. That seems to be His purpose and as a person like no other person it does not make Him human. Wanting entertainment is human. And finally I have no idea whether He is limited. I make perfect sense to me, point after point.

Nobody is claiming that God is human, but that does not mean we can't have any attributes in common with him. If he exists, it is not unreasonable to ask why he might have created the universe. Your insistence that he did so in order to produce human beings leads you to contradiction after contradiction, which I will list once more if you cannot remember them all. But for now, let me ask you a personal question: since you are not prepared to ask why God wanted to create humans (your own answers having led to highly confusing hypotheses), and since you believe it possible that he doesn’t even care what happens to individual humans, why is it so important for you to establish that he planned the universe and the whole of life for the sake of humans, as opposed to their being perhaps the result of his experiments or of an afterthought?

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DAVID: What I have clearly said is God has chosen to use evolutionary methods for the universe, for the Earth and for life. That does not indicate He has any limits. Where I have definitely suggested limits are the asteroids as they may be necessary.

dhw: If in order to produce humans he had to use the roundabout method you impose on him and couldn’t do direct creation, he was limited.

DAVID: I'm sorry I've confused you. My stance is expressed clearly above. Your no limitation approach might never have arrived at humans.

Dhw: My theistic approach does not involve God having limitations or having no limitations, and allows for him dabbling. It focuses on the actual history of evolution and tries to extrapolate God’s possible intentions.

Dhw: Your objection to this reverts to:
DAVID: And you are humanizing Him again. I don't know He needed an entertaining show.
dhw: I did not say that he needed it but that he wanted it, just as you say he wanted to create humans. It is impossible to discuss your God’s intentions without humanizing him, as you have discovered in your own attempts to explain why he wanted to produce humans. But of course we don’t “know”. We are simply trying to find an explanation that fits the history of life, and your own makes no sense to you unless you impose limitations on your God’s powers.

DAVID: There is a giant difference. We don't know why He wanted humans. That seems to be His purpose and as a person like no other person it does not make Him human. Wanting entertainment is human. And finally I have no idea whether He is limited. I make perfect sense to me, point after point.

dhw: Nobody is claiming that God is human, but that does not mean we can't have any attributes in common with him. If he exists, it is not unreasonable to ask why he might have created the universe. Your insistence that he did so in order to produce human beings leads you to contradiction after contradiction, which I will list once more if you cannot remember them all. But for now, let me ask you a personal question: since you are not prepared to ask why God wanted to create humans (your own answers having led to highly confusing hypotheses), and since you believe it possible that he doesn’t even care what happens to individual humans, why is it so important for you to establish that he planned the universe and the whole of life for the sake of humans, as opposed to their being perhaps the result of his experiments or of an afterthought?

It is not important to me that God created humans. To imply an importance to my investigations over the years suggests a motive I did not have. I was a superficial agnostic after medical school. That is, I just didn't know or care. Then when I started to follow the development of the standard model of particles and the theories of cosmology, I realized there had to be a power behind it. I had the same non-committal feeling about Darwin's theory. After my first book the editor suggested I write about Science and evolution based on what I told him about my thought. He suggested I take critical look at Darwin' theory, and I quickly discovered it was a house of cards. Thus the first science vs. religion book.

Our discussions and your critical observations have made me defend my choices. I appreciate the debate on your part and my arrival at current conclusions. What you have seen is a stream of consciousness as I have responded to you, while I wander/wonder all over the place. I now am sure of my thought as follows: God uses evolution as a process, producing a universe in a single event which then evolved. He had the Earth appear in its special form with plate tectonics, etc., and finally He started life which then evolved to humans, an obvious desired end point. And the processes which cause life are too complex for a chance development In that In those thoughts I am firmly certain. What is not certain is whether He pre-programmed each of these evolutions. If He did then he is really all-powerful per the Bible. If on the other hand He had to dabble, then He is limited. No one knows which is correct, and nothing in the known historical record can tell us. Either way, all powerful or semi-powerful, He is in tight control of those processes. He certainly could have given organisms some degree of inventiveness, and then corrected what went off the rails. We have no evidence of any modifications beyond the minor adaptations that organisms can accomplish. Anything beyond what I have stated is pure guess work until we understand speciation, if we ever can.

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dhw: …since you are not prepared to ask why God wanted to create humans (your own answers having led to highly confusing hypotheses), and since you believe it possible that he doesn’t even care what happens to individual humans, why is it so important for you to establish that he planned the universe and the whole of life for the sake of humans, as opposed to their being perhaps the result of his experiments or of an afterthought?

DAVID: It is not important to me that God created humans.

That was not what I asked. You have based your whole interpretation of evolution on the rigid premise that God planned humans from the start. And so I am asking why this basic premise, which leads to so many self-confessed "wanderings all over the place" (as below), is so important to you.

DAVID: Our discussions and your critical observations have made me defend my choices. I appreciate the debate on your part and my arrival at current conclusions. What you have seen is a stream of consciousness as I have responded to you, while I wander/wonder all over the place.

Thank you for this honest description of your arguments. I share your wonder, but the wandering – as you well know – is the source of our many disagreements. (N.B. my generally negative approach should never be taken to mean I think I have any answers. And I acknowledge wholeheartedly that my indecision makes me wrong one way or the other.)

DAVID: I now am sure of my thought as follows: God uses evolution as a process, producing a universe in a single event which then evolved. He had the Earth appear in its special form with plate tectonics, etc., and finally He started life which then evolved to humans, an obvious desired end point. And the processes which cause life are too complex for a chance development. In those thoughts I am firmly certain.

This is where I must put on my theist hat, so that I can discuss the subject with you on your own terms. I can understand and indeed accept the case for humans being very, very special, but the dislocation comes when you insist on the “obvious desired end point” with the following choice:
DAVID: What is not certain is whether He pre-programmed each of these evolutions. If He did then he is really all-powerful per the Bible. If on the other hand He had to dabble, then He is limited.

I find it hard to believe that your God - who can create out of his own energy a whole universe plus all the big and little bits and pieces necessary for life - finds himself unable to do what he wants to do with his own invention. If he CHOSE to give evolution a free rein, but sometimes CHOSE to dabble (e.g. perhaps with Chixculub, or with the pre-human brain) then dabbling does not mean he is limited.

DAVID: No one knows which is correct, and nothing in the known historical record can tell us. Either way, all powerful or semi-powerful, He is in tight control of those processes. He certainly could have given organisms some degree of inventiveness, and then corrected what went off the rails.

You are presupposing rails, because you are presupposing a definite plan right from the outset to produce humans. You have categorically rejected the possibility that plants, weaverbirds, monarch butterflies and parasitic wasps can work out their own lifestyles. However, your “some degree of inventiveness” (my autonomous inventive mechanism, or intelligence) means that either they DID work it out, or they tried and failed (“went off the rails”) and so God had to correct them, because he needed them to keep life going etc. This is the sort of “wandering” that makes non-sense (the hyphen is important) out of the otherwise immensely powerful case you always make for design. I could even see sense in the idea that he really did design all these lifestyles and wonders for the sheer pleasure of their creation – but not because he was forced to do it until his limited powers enabled him to dabble the human brain.

DAVID: We have no evidence of any modifications beyond the minor adaptations that organisms can accomplish. Anything beyond what I have stated is pure guess work until we understand speciation, if we ever can.

True. But that is not a good reason for clinging to a hypothesis which leads to so much confusion.

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DAVID: It is not important to me that God created humans.

dhw: That was not what I asked. You have based your whole interpretation of evolution on the rigid premise that God planned humans from the start. And so I am asking why this basic premise, which leads to so many self-confessed "wanderings all over the place" (as below), is so important to you.

Because I reached this conclusion which feels so right to me after reading endless books that humans are the desired endpoint. We differ in that I have developed faith in that I am right and the idea of a supreme power does not offend my sense of logic. I follow John Leslie as closely as I follow Adler: Universes, 1989 is woth reading in the full. His closing conclusion is "God is real and/or there exist many, very varied universes". I interpret this as meaning God is real or there is are multiverses, or God invented all the multiverses and picked this one to be fine-tuned for life. At this point in my reading I finally came to realize there has to be a God.

DAVID: I now am sure of my thought as follows: God uses evolution as a process, producing a universe in a single event which then evolved. He had the Earth appear in its special form with plate tectonics, etc., and finally He started life which then evolved to humans, an obvious desired end point. And the processes which cause life are too complex for a chance development. In those thoughts I am firmly certain.

dhw: This is where I must put on my theist hat, so that I can discuss the subject with you on your own terms. I can understand and indeed accept the case for humans being very, very special, but the dislocation comes when you insist on the “obvious desired end point” with the following choice:

DAVID: What is not certain is whether He pre-programmed each of these evolutions. If He did then he is really all-powerful per the Bible. If on the other hand He had to dabble, then He is limited.

dhw: I find it hard to believe that your God - who can create out of his own energy a whole universe plus all the big and little bits and pieces necessary for life - finds himself unable to do what he wants to do with his own invention. If he CHOSE to give evolution a free rein, but sometimes CHOSE to dabble (e.g. perhaps with Chixculub, or with the pre-human brain) then dabbling does not mean he is limited.

You are again skipping over the point of this discussion: why dangerous asteroids? He must have had to include them as He evolved the universe. Threfore limited to some degree.

DAVID: No one knows which is correct, and nothing in the known historical record can tell us. Either way, all powerful or semi-powerful, He is in tight control of those processes. He certainly could have given organisms some degree of inventiveness, and then corrected what went off the rails.

dhw: You are presupposing rails, because you are presupposing a definite plan right from the outset to produce humans. You have categorically rejected the possibility that plants, weaverbirds, monarch butterflies and parasitic wasps can work out their own lifestyles. However, your “some degree of inventiveness” (my autonomous inventive mechanism, or intelligence) means that either they DID work it out, or they tried and failed (“went off the rails”) and so God had to correct them, because he needed them to keep life going etc. This is the sort of “wandering” that makes non-sense (the hyphen is important) out of the otherwise immensely powerful case you always make for design. I could even see sense in the idea that he really did design all these lifestyles and wonders for the sheer pleasure of their creation – but not because he was forced to do it until his limited powers enabled him to dabble the human brain.

DAVID: We have no evidence of any modifications beyond the minor adaptations that organisms can accomplish. Anything beyond what I have stated is pure guess work until we understand speciation, if we ever can.

dhw: True. But that is not a good reason for clinging to a hypothesis which leads to so much confusion.

It is your confusion, not mine. From the beginning I've said that God controls evolution, either pre-programmed or with dabbles. I don't know that God's limitations, if any, required that He use an evolutionary process. He may have chosen evolution of life as His preferred way. That is what He absense leaves us with: the problem of interpretation. ID folks don't like theistic evolution for just that reason. They believe in an all-powerful God who doesn't need evolution, and end up not believing in any kind of evolutioanary process while studying it! They conclude He simply steps in and speciates! I could do that also based on my reading but I simply prefer (for no good reason)the pre-programing or dabble approach. What influences me is the evolutionary processes I see in devolution of the universe and in the development of a life-supporting Earth.

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dhw: You have based your whole interpretation of evolution on the rigid premise that God planned humans from the start. And so I am asking why this basic premise, which leads to so many self-confessed "wanderings all over the place" … is so important to you.
DAVID: Because I reached this conclusion which feels so right to me after reading endless books that humans are the desired endpoint. We differ in that I have developed faith in that I am right and the idea of a supreme power does not offend my sense of logic.

The idea of a supreme power does not offend my logic either, and that is not what we are talking about. For the sake of argument, I am accepting the existence of your God. I will also accept that humans are special, in view of their enhanced consciousness. Once more: what I am disputing is your claim that he planned humans right from the start and geared the whole of evolution to producing them. I have offered alternatives to your preprogramming and dabbling scenario: 1) He wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but didn’t know how to do it, and so kept experimenting (which fits in perfectly with your new belief that your God may be limited in his powers. 2) He wanted to produce an ever-changing spectacle, and humans came into his mind as an afterthought. Both these scenarios explain the higgledy-piggledy nature of life’s history. Why, then, is it so important to you that your God should have planned humans right from the start, when this hypothesis leads to so much confusion, as below?

DAVID: ...why dangerous asteroids? He must have had to include them as He evolved the universe. Therefore limited to some degree.

“Must have” means he is limited. Then you go on to say: “I don't know that God's limitations, if any, required that He use an evolutionary process.” Why “if any” if he must have had to use asteroids? If he is forced by his own laws of nature to use asteroids, what else might he have been forced to do? You answer this question yourself in the following exchange:

Dhw: …his ability to dabble makes even you wonder why he couldn't have produced us more directly. It just doesn't make sense.
DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans. (Followed later by the explanation:) He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.

Limitations are your explanation for why he couldn’t produce us more directly and therefore had to design every other life form etc. If you use limitations as your explanation for his having to create everything else, but then you argue that he may not be limited, you are once more confronted with the non-sense of your scenario! That is why I keep asking why it is so important to you to believe humans were planned from the very beginning.

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Humans were the last of creation, by biblical accounts. There is no record of whether we were the original end goal either, as we interrupted the creative process prematurely. The only two references as to the purpose of creation as a whole was that it was a gift for his son, and that humans were to be caretakers for this planet and the life upon it.

As for His power, I think logically you to are barking up the wrong tree. If you consider the Universe as a framework, there is a very real possibility that exerting his full power in the manner you suggest would break the universe. Imagine building a ship in a bottle. Once you pass a certain point, forcing objects around inside is more likely to break everything, even if you have the raw strength to do so.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Tony: Humans were the last of creation, by biblical accounts. There is no record of whether we were the original end goal either, as we interrupted the creative process prematurely. The only two references as to the purpose of creation as a whole was that it was a gift for his son, and that humans were to be caretakers for this planet and the life upon it.

I don't understand your comment that humans interrupted the creative process.

Tony: As for His power, I think logically you to are barking up the wrong tree. If you consider the Universe as a framework, there is a very real possibility that exerting his full power in the manner you suggest would break the universe. Imagine building a ship in a bottle. Once you pass a certain point, forcing objects around inside is more likely to break everything, even if you have the raw strength to do so.

Your analogy fits my point of view.

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Tony: Humans were the last of creation, by biblical accounts. There is no record of whether we were the original end goal either, as we interrupted the creative process prematurely. The only two references as to the purpose of creation as a whole was that it was a gift for his son, and that humans were to be caretakers for this planet and the life upon it.

I don't understand your comment that humans interrupted the creative process.

Speaking from a purely biblical perspective, God rested on the "seventh day" or seventh time period, after humanity was created. The there was the whole rebellion in Eden thing, and there is no mention of further creative process in the past tense. In fact, it plainly states "there is nothing new under the sun." Nothing new was being created. However, there are references to new things to come in a future tense in Revelations. I.e.Need to work out the kinks before continuing development.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Tony: Humans were the last of creation, by biblical accounts. There is no record of whether we were the original end goal either, as we interrupted the creative process prematurely. The only two references as to the purpose of creation as a whole was that it was a gift for his son, and that humans were to be caretakers for this planet and the life upon it.

David: I don't understand your comment that humans interrupted the creative process.

Tony: Speaking from a purely biblical perspective, God rested on the "seventh day" or seventh time period, after humanity was created. The there was the whole rebellion in Eden thing, and there is no mention of further creative process in the past tense. In fact, it plainly states "there is nothing new under the sun." Nothing new was being created. However, there are references to new things to come in a future tense in Revelations. I.e.Need to work out the kinks before continuing development.

So perhaps humans sre an end point until kinks whatever they are, are worked out.

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TONY: As for His power, I think logically you to are barking up the wrong tree. If you consider the Universe as a framework, there is a very real possibility that exerting his full power in the manner you suggest would break the universe. Imagine building a ship in a bottle. Once you pass a certain point, forcing objects around inside is more likely to break everything, even if you have the raw strength to do so.

I don’t know what tree you think I’m barking up! Let me fill you in on the discussion so far. David believes his God created the universe and life for the purpose of producing humans, and did it by designing a vast variety of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain (or until the time came for his 3.8-billion-year-old computer software encompassing the whole of life’s history to switch on its brain-enlargement programme). David has suggested that perhaps God’s powers are limited, and he HAD to do it this way, just as he HAD to produce asteroids. I don’t think either of us would dispute that if he is powerful enough to create the universe, he is also powerful enough to destroy it, but the disagreement between us is over his intentions and his means of fulfilling his intentions. See the rest of the discussion below.

DAVID: ...why dangerous asteroids? He must have had to include them as He evolved the universe. Therefore limited to some degree.
dhw: “Must have” means he is limited. Then you go on to say: “I don't know that God's limitations, if any, required that He use an evolutionary process.” Why “if any” if he must have had to use asteroids? If he is forced by his own laws of nature to use asteroids, what else might he have been forced to do?
DAVID: Note Tony's comment. God's universe must have required asteroids, and then in my sense He is limited.

IF he is limited in one context, he may be limited in others. NB I am not saying he is. That is your explanation for why he couldn’t produce humans until he’d produced carnivorous plants, frogs’ tongues and the weaverbird’s nest.

DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans. (Followed later by the explanation:) He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.
dhw: Limitations are your explanation for why he couldn’t produce us more directly and therefore had to design every other life form etc. If you use limitations as your explanation for his having to create everything else, but then you argue that he may not be limited, you are once more confronted with the non-sense of your scenario! That is why I keep asking why it is so important to you to believe humans were planned from the very beginning.
DAVID: Limitations are only one possibility, not the only explanation available as I have indicated. Why can't I look at it in several ways, all of which are logical approaches to the problem. Perhaps evolutionary change was preferred. I'm not wedded to any of the possibilities of explaining His methods.

You have ONLY offered preprogramming and/or dabbling as his methods, and you have ONLY offered the one purpose: to produce humans. You are asking the question I keep asking you: why can’t you look at it in several ways, all of which are logical answers to the problem of why the history of life is one long sequence of hugely varied life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct. Maybe humans were not planned from the beginning. Maybe your God wanted to create an ever-changing spectacle, and hit on the idea of an enhanced consciousness as the spectacle developed. Or maybe your God wanted to create an enhanced consciousness like his own but didn’t know how to do it and had to experiment. Tony clearly has other “maybes” in mind.

DAVID: Humans had to be planned from the beginning. They are here against all odds, not required by nature's stresses; nothing more is required to recognize the reason I accept the premise.

ALL life is here against all odds, and the survival of bacteria shows that NO multicellular forms of life were required by nature’s stresses. You continue to wander around all over the place (your words, not mine) because you resolutely refuse to look at the problem in any way other than humans being planned from the beginning, and everything else being a means to that end. And you still won’t tell me why this belief is so important to you that you are unable to consider any alternative explanations of life's history.

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By barking up the wrong tree, I simply meant that the existence f something dangerous did not imply limitations in power, in and of itself.

When viewed through the lens of "God created the earth even to be inhabited", then it stands to reason that the overall design would reflect the requirements contained therein. You wouldn't design a car without tires. However, the R fact that cars exist implies the inherent dangers of accidents. He desined a universe, complete with s, planets, gravity, etc complete with the inherent possibility of them dying in their own time, with the accompanying cataclysilmic consequences.

Apologies for typos, this is a cell phone :p

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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TONY: By barking up the wrong tree, I simply meant that the existence of something dangerous did not imply limitations in power, in and of itself.

It is David’s hypothesis that his God might perhaps be limited in power (e.g. perhaps he had no choice but to use asteroids, and to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he was able to produce homo sapiens). I don’t buy either of these particular limitations, but I don’t have a problem with the idea that God may have deliberately sacrificed control (at least temporarily), and may also have learned from his own experiments, as opposed to knowing everything in advance. Danger is a different subject, as below:

TONY: When viewed through the lens of "God created the earth even to be inhabited", then it stands to reason that the overall design would reflect the requirements contained therein. You wouldn't design a car without tires. However, the R fact that cars exist implies the inherent dangers of accidents. He desined a universe, complete with s, planets, gravity, etc complete with the inherent possibility of them dying in their own time, with the accompanying cataclysilmic consequences.

Anyone who believes in God will accept that he designed the universe as it is. The fact that his design incorporates natural disasters and diseases that were in place long before humans came on the scene raises questions about his motivation and attitude towards his creations, and also about his own nature. All of us are familiar with these problems (which basically boil down to the origin of evil) and we have discussed them at length. That’s no reason why we shouldn’t discuss them again if you want to!

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TONY: By barking up the wrong tree, I simply meant that the existence of something dangerous did not imply limitations in power, in and of itself.

dhw: It is David’s hypothesis that his God might perhaps be limited in power (e.g. perhaps he had no choice but to use asteroids, and to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he was able to produce homo sapiens). I don’t buy either of these particular limitations, but I don’t have a problem with the idea that God may have deliberately sacrificed control (at least temporarily), and may also have learned from his own experiments, as opposed to knowing everything in advance.

My proposal that God might have some limitations is only one interpretation I have offered it as an alternative for discussion. Is God all-everything or are there limits? Since He uses evolutionary processes He may have to work at sequential plans when He discovers limits at a given stage.

TONY: When viewed through the lens of "God created the earth even to be inhabited", then it stands to reason that the overall design would reflect the requirements contained therein. You wouldn't design a car without tires. However, the R fact that cars exist implies the inherent dangers of accidents. He desined a universe, complete with s, planets, gravity, etc complete with the inherent possibility of them dying in their own time, with the accompanying cataclysilmic consequences.

dhw: Anyone who believes in God will accept that he designed the universe as it is. The fact that his design incorporates natural disasters and diseases that were in place long before humans came on the scene raises questions about his motivation and attitude towards his creations, and also about his own nature. All of us are familiar with these problems (which basically boil down to the origin of evil) and we have discussed them at length. That’s no reason why we shouldn’t discuss them again if you want to!

It has been noted that viruses are possibly used to further evolution itself. Yet viruses can cause disease. Plate tectonics are required for life on Earth. There are plusses and minuses that cannot be avoided. That is obvious, so the bad things are not necessarily intentional on God's part, which you imply. God created humans with free will, so some of them are evil. And you think that is God's intention?:

"natural disasters and diseases that were in place long before humans came on the scene raises questions about his motivation and attitude towards his creations, and also about his own nature."

I view that thought as very narrow reasoning.

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I see the give and take as a requirement inherent in the grand design, not a limitation. Perhaps the universe and everything in it COULD have been created with and potential for callamity, but in doing so it would removed the possibility for variety, free will, surprises, and any other number of things that make life worth living.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Tony: I see the give and take as a requirement inherent in the grand design, not a limitation. Perhaps the universe and everything in it COULD have been created with and potential for callamity, but in doing so it would removed the possibility for variety, free will, surprises, and any other number of things that make life worth living.

Excellent point. I still think some of the dangers are from required elements.

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DAVID: Limitations are only one possibility, not the only explanation available as I have indicated. Why can't I look at it in several ways, all of which are logical approaches to the problem. Perhaps evolutionary change was preferred. I'm not wedded to any of the possibilities of explaining His methods.

dhw: You have ONLY offered preprogramming and/or dabbling as his methods, and you have ONLY offered the one purpose: to produce humans. You are asking the question I keep asking you: why can’t you look at it in several ways, all of which are logical answers to the problem of why the history of life is one long sequence of hugely varied life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct. Maybe humans were not planned from the beginning. Maybe your God wanted to create an ever-changing spectacle, and hit on the idea of an enhanced consciousness as the spectacle developed. Or maybe your God wanted to create an enhanced consciousness like his own but didn’t know how to do it and had to experiment. Tony clearly has other “maybes” in mind.

Your comments shift from methods to possible intentions. I think we've agreed God uses evolutionary processes. You have God's possible intentions wandering all over the place, as if He were a wandering human, not sure how to proceed. He is not. I view Him as absolutely purposeful. In my view He started this universe to create humans as His prime purpose.

DAVID: Humans had to be planned from the beginning. They are here against all odds, not required by nature's stresses; nothing more is required to recognize the reason I accept the premise.

dhw: ALL life is here against all odds, and the survival of bacteria shows that NO multicellular forms of life were required by nature’s stresses. You continue to wander around all over the place (your words, not mine) because you resolutely refuse to look at the problem in any way other than humans being planned from the beginning, and everything else being a means to that end. And you still won’t tell me why this belief is so important to you that you are unable to consider any alternative explanations of life's history.

My view covered above in my new remarks today. The belief makes perfect sense to me. To use your own words: "ALL life is here against all odds", but humans are a very special form of life with a consciousness that is so unusual in its magnitude of attributes, we cannot explain it. During the during the past 8-10 million years of human evolution, haven't you noticed that nothing else really evolved? Some species disappeared, but apes and monkeys stayed the same. We are looking at God's final drive to produce H. sapiens, the end of His process. We are looking at my developed faith against your groundless applying of human motives to God's activities.

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DAVID: Your comments shift from methods to possible intentions. I think we've agreed God uses evolutionary processes. You have God's possible intentions wandering all over the place, as if He were a wandering human, not sure how to proceed. He is not. I view Him as absolutely purposeful. In my view He started this universe to create humans as His prime purpose.

I am painfully aware of your view regarding God’s prime purpose. I have proposed two possible intentions/purposes: 1) to produce a spectacle; 2) to produce humans (though I would also like to know his purpose in doing so). Hardly “all over the place”. He knows exactly how to proceed for the spectacle hypothesis (which allows for dabbling anyway). For the production of humans, I offer experimentation (limitation of knowledge) in place of your making him incapable of producing them (limitation of powers) without first designing every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder until he could dabble with the pre-human brain, or pre-humans could switch on his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for brain enlargement.

DAVID: Humans had to be planned from the beginning. They are here against all odds, not required by nature's stresses; nothing more is required to recognize the reason I accept the premise.
dhw: ALL life is here against all odds, and the survival of bacteria shows that NO multicellular forms of life were required by nature’s stresses. You continue to wander around all over the place (your words, not mine) because you resolutely refuse to look at the problem in any way other than humans being planned from the beginning, and everything else being a means to that end. And you still won’t tell me why this belief is so important to you that you are unable to consider any alternative explanations of life's history.
DAVID: My view covered above in my new remarks today. The belief makes perfect sense to me. To use your own words: "ALL life is here against all odds", but humans are a very special form of life with a consciousness that is so unusual in its magnitude of attributes, we cannot explain it. During the during the past 8-10 million years of human evolution, haven't you noticed that nothing else really evolved? Some species disappeared, but apes and monkeys stayed the same. We are looking at God's final drive to produce H. sapiens, the end of His process. We are looking at my developed faith against your groundless applying of human motives to God's activities.

I have never disputed the extraordinary nature of human consciousness. The question is why, if humans were God’s prime purpose, he first had to design every other life form, lifestyle and natural wonder. Your only counter to my proposals, both of which provide a perfectly logical explanation for the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush, is to reiterate your opinion. I don’t know why you call your faith in your evolutionary scenario “developed” when you admit that you wander all over the place in trying to justify it, and I don’t know why, if God is “absolutely purposeful”, you consider it wrong to ask what his purpose for producing humans might be. (I see no difference between purpose, intention and motive.) And why is it less purposeful to create a spectacle, or to experiment (the alternatives I offered above), than to produce human beings by designing millions of other life forms, styles and natural wonders that have no link to the production of humans?

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DAVID: Your comments shift from methods to possible intentions. I think we've agreed God uses evolutionary processes. You have God's possible intentions wandering all over the place, as if He were a wandering human, not sure how to proceed. He is not. I view Him as absolutely purposeful. In my view He started this universe to create humans as His prime purpose.

dhw: I am painfully aware of your view regarding God’s prime purpose. I have proposed two possible intentions/purposes: 1) to produce a spectacle; 2) to produce humans (though I would also like to know his purpose in doing so).

Looking for spectacles is again describing human entertainment, not very God-like. I would also like to know for sure why he produced humans. I've offered several thoughts.

DAVID: My view covered above in my new remarks today. The belief makes perfect sense to me. To use your own words: "ALL life is here against all odds", but humans are a very special form of life with a consciousness that is so unusual in its magnitude of attributes, we cannot explain it. During the during the past 8-10 million years of human evolution, haven't you noticed that nothing else really evolved? Some species disappeared, but apes and monkeys stayed the same. We are looking at God's final drive to produce H. sapiens, the end of His process. We are looking at my developed faith against your groundless applying of human motives to God's activities.

dhw: I have never disputed the extraordinary nature of human consciousness. The question is why, if humans were God’s prime purpose, he first had to design every other life form, lifestyle and natural wonder. Your only counter to my proposals, both of which provide a perfectly logical explanation for the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush, is to reiterate your opinion. I don’t know why you call your faith in your evolutionary scenario “developed” when you admit that you wander all over the place in trying to justify it,

On the contrary I've firmly stated God uses evolutionary processes to create.

dhw: and I don’t know why, if God is “absolutely purposeful”, you consider it wrong to ask what his purpose for producing humans might be.

You've asked and I've replied. What is wrong?

dhw:(I see no difference between purpose, intention and motive.) And why is it less purposeful to create a spectacle, or to experiment (the alternatives I offered above), than to produce human beings by designing millions of other life forms, styles and natural wonders that have no link to the production of humans?

Evolution links everything. It is obvious God uses evolutionary processes.

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TONY: By barking up the wrong tree, I simply meant that the existence of something dangerous did not imply limitations in power, in and of itself.
dhw: It is David’s hypothesis that his God might perhaps be limited in power (e.g. perhaps he had no choice but to use asteroids, and to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he was able to produce homo sapiens). I don’t buy either of these particular limitations, but I don’t have a problem with the idea that God may have deliberately sacrificed control (at least temporarily), and may also have learned from his own experiments, as opposed to knowing everything in advance.
David: My proposal that God might have some limitations is only one interpretation I have offered it as an alternative for discussion. Is God all-everything or are there limits? Since He uses evolutionary processes He may have to work at sequential plans when He discovers limits at a given stage.

If he “discovers limits”, then he is experimenting, which was the second alternative I offered you, i.e. he wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but he didn’t know how to do it (as opposed to his knowing it all in advance, and only dabbling if organisms needed “correcting”). Hence the higgledy-piggledy bush. We are making progress.

DAVID: It has been noted that viruses are possibly used to further evolution itself. Yet viruses can cause disease. Plate tectonics are required for life on Earth. There are plusses and minuses that cannot be avoided. That is obvious, so the bad things are not necessarily intentional on God's part, which you imply. God created humans with free will, so some of them are evil. And you think that is God's intention?

They are pluses and minuses that cannot be avoided if your God – who you believe created everything out of his own energy – is limited by the natural laws he created. If you are now claiming that his production of bad things (I include natural disasters and disease as well as human nastiness under the broad category of “evil”) may have been unintentional, then it rings pretty hollow when you criticize other concepts of God as being un-Godlike (see below). Of course, you have every right to use your human judgement in contemplating your God’s possible powers and nature, and so do I.

Dhw: "natural disasters and diseases that were in place long before humans came on the scene raises questions about his motivation and attitude towards his creations, and also about his own nature."
DAVID: I view that thought as very narrow reasoning.

Why is it narrow reasoning to inquire into God’s possible motives, attitudes and nature, but it is not narrow reasoning to say that he does not have a “smidgen” of evil in him (as if you knew him personally) but he may have been powerless to avoid the evil consequences of his quest to produce humans?

TONY: I see the give and take as a requirement inherent in the grand design, not a limitation. Perhaps the universe and everything in it COULD have been created with and potential for callamity, but in doing so it would removed the possibility for variety, free will, surprises, and any other number of things that make life worth living.

I presume you mean “without the potential”, and this is an approach I find far more rational than that of a God who can create a universe and life, but is at the mercy of his own limitations. It fits in perfectly with the hypothesis that he deliberately created the possibility for variety and surprises etc., and all the ambivalences. I then ask myself why he did so. And one perfectly logical answer is that it produces a fascinating spectacle for him to watch.

DAVID: Looking for spectacles is again describing human entertainment, not very God-like. I would also like to know for sure why he produced humans. I've offered several thoughts.

Even you have suggested that God is watching, so it’s certainly no less “God-like” than a God who wants to produce humans and unintentionally produces a system which indiscriminately causes incalculable suffering just because he can’t find another way of doing it. And yes, you have offered some thoughts as to why he produced humans: 1) he wanted a relationship with us (but keeps himself hidden from us and doesn’t have any human attributes for us to relate to); 2) he wants to watch us solve the problems he couldn’t solve himself (but we mustn’t call that a spectacle). What else have you offered?

DAVID: … We are looking at my developed faith against your groundless applying of human motives to God's activities.
dhw: I don’t know why you call your faith in your evolutionary scenario “developed” when you admit that you wander all over the place in trying to justify it,
DAVID: On the contrary I've firmly stated God uses evolutionary processes to create.

But you wander all over the place (your own expression) when you try to explain why he had to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain, or pre-humans were able to switch on his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for brain enlargement.

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Is it possible that he leftthe possibility of wonderful variety out of love for his creation, as opposed to the more selfish motive of his own amusement?

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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TONY: Perhaps the universe and everything in it COULD have been created with and potential for callamity, but in doing so it would removed the possibility for variety, free will, surprises, and any other number of things that make life worth living.
DHW: I presume you mean “without the potential”, and this is an approach I find far more rational than that of a God who can create a universe and life, but is at the mercy of his own limitations. It fits in perfectly with the hypothesis that he deliberately created the possibility for variety and surprises etc., and all the ambivalences. I then ask myself why he did so. And one perfectly logical answer is that it produces a fascinating spectacle for him to watch.

TONY: Is it possible that he left the possibility of wonderful variety out of love for his creation, as opposed to the more selfish motive of his own amusement?

If he exists, then of course I would like to think he is as capable of love as we are. But just as I gaze in wonderment at the richness of this variety, and recognize that you cannot have the good without the bad, I also ask myself whether this in itself is not a reflection of the God who created it all. I wonder why your God should have created a system whereby life depends on the indiscriminate slaughter of the innocents through natural disasters and diseases, and one creature having to eat another in order to survive. David doesn’t like any attribution of human qualities to his God, but since you are clearly willing to see him as loving, perhaps you will understand why I can see another side to him through the not-so-lovable things he has created. The idea of a spectacle does not exclude love, and I can well believe that your God might for instance love humans who worship him, but it also allows for “selfish amusement” and indifference to suffering.

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dhw:David doesn’t like any attribution of human qualities to his God, but since you are clearly willing to see him as loving, perhaps you will understand why I can see another side to him through the not-so-lovable things he has created. The idea of a spectacle does not exclude love, and I can well believe that your God might for instance love humans who worship him, but it also allows for “selfish amusement” and indifference to suffering.

Since you don't believe in him, it allows you to make any supposition you wish about his personality, rather than presume, as I do, that his personality is unknowable.

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dhw: If he “discovers limits”, then he is experimenting, which was the second alternative I offered you, i.e. he wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but he didn’t know how to do it (as opposed to his knowing it all in advance, and only dabbling if organisms needed “correcting”).

I don't view it as experimenting. His purpose is always before Him as He oversees the evolution. If you study planetary theory, it is explained that Earth and the other three inner metallic/rocky planets were formed by being bombarded by bodies (planetismals). What is left over are the asteroids from the original planetary disc around the sun. The method God chose was limited in the sense that asteroids were left over, and the other possible reason for our danger is that the asteroids were required to remain. Remember, in my approach I ignore the Bible's description of absolutely all-powerful.

dhw: If you are now claiming that his production of bad things (I include natural disasters and disease as well as human nastiness under the broad category of “evil”) may have been unintentional, then it rings pretty hollow when you criticize other concepts of God as being un-Godlike (see below). Of course, you have every right to use your human judgement in contemplating your God’s possible powers and nature, and so do I.

Yes, we both use human judgement, but your constant humanizing is not equal to the possibility that God must put up with some unintended consequences. See Tony's comment.

DAVID: I view that thought as very narrow reasoning.

dhw: Why is it narrow reasoning to inquire into God’s possible motives, attitudes and nature, but it is not narrow reasoning to say that he does not have a “smidgen” of evil in him (as if you knew him personally) but he may have been powerless to avoid the evil consequences of his quest to produce humans?

No human knows a personage like God. Free will has consequences. Should God have made us all saints with limited emotions?

dhw: you have offered some thoughts as to why he produced humans: 1) he wanted a relationship with us (but keeps himself hidden from us and doesn’t have any human attributes for us to relate to); 2) he wants to watch us solve the problems he couldn’t solve himself (but we mustn’t call that a spectacle). What else have you offered?

It is your spectacle, not mine. Why must you know why He wanted to create us. Isn't the fact of our creation, enough? If He didn't do it, who would?

dhw: I don’t know why you call your faith in your evolutionary scenario “developed” when you admit that you wander all over the place in trying to justify it,

DAVID: On the contrary I've firmly stated God uses evolutionary processes to create.

dhw: But you wander all over the place (your own expression) when you try to explain why he had to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain, or pre-humans were able to switch on his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for brain enlargement.

I'm not wondering. You keep denying my reasonable theory that a balance of nature is required. And his dabble is identified:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/evolving-a-human-brain?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmos+Ma...

"Charrier and her team found that introducing the human backup gene, SRGAP2C, delayed the maturation so spines kept sprouting, which enabled them to make more connections. The experiment showed how, through the copying and then tweaking of a single gene, evolution increased the circuit complexity of the human brain.

"The latest work follows a similar plot line. Marta Florio, a PhD student in the Huttner lab studied another backup copy of a gene that is present in humans but absent from chimps and mice. It is called ARHGAP11B. When the human version was introduced into developing mice, it caused a particular population of brain stem cells – basal radial glia – to increase their rounds of multiplication. Not only did mice double the number of these stem cells in some cases their ballooning brains started folding to fit into the skull – just as the brains of primates do.

"That finding was reported in Science in 2015. The latest finding is that just a single letter change in the ARHGAP11B DNA is able to increase the multiplication of basal radial glia."

Comment: Whole article is worth reading.

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DAVID: Since He uses evolutionary processes He may have to work at sequential plans when He discovers limits at a given stage.
dhw: If he “discovers limits”, then he is experimenting, which was the second alternative I offered you, i.e. he wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but he didn’t know how to do it (as opposed to his knowing it all in advance, and only dabbling if organisms needed “correcting”).
DAVID: I don't view it as experimenting. His purpose is always before Him as He oversees the evolution. If you study planetary theory, it is explained that Earth and the other three inner metallic/rocky planets were formed by being bombarded by bodies (planetismals) […] Remember, in my approach I ignore the Bible's description of absolutely all-powerful.

That does not in any way alter the fact that if he has to adapt to new discoveries at a given stage, whether in relation to asteroids or to the production of humans, he has not got it all planned in advance, and therefore he must be experimenting in his attempts to find the right combination. Since you have no hesitation in limiting his powers, why are you so frightened of the idea that his knowledge might also be limited?

DAVID: Yes, we both use human judgement, but your constant humanizing is not equal to the possibility that God must put up with some unintended consequences.

I don’t know what you mean by “not equal to” etc. Your theory that your God is unable to control the consequences of his own actions and must “put up with them” is no more and no less human than my hypothesis that he IS able to control the consequences of his own actions, and has chosen this particular method because it suits his purpose, which may not be just to produce humans but to produce the great spectacle of life as we know it.

dhw: Why is it narrow reasoning to inquire into God’s possible motives, attitudes and nature, but it is not narrow reasoning to say that he does not have a “smidgen” of evil in him (as if you knew him personally) but he may have been powerless to avoid the evil consequences of his quest to produce humans?
DAVID: No human knows a personage like God. Free will has consequences. Should God have made us all saints with limited emotions?

That is a complete non sequitur. We are talking about God’s nature, not human nature.

dhw: you have offered some thoughts as to why he produced humans: 1) he wanted a relationship with us (but keeps himself hidden from us and doesn’t have any human attributes for us to relate to); 2) he wants to watch us solve the problems he couldn’t solve himself (but we mustn’t call that a spectacle). What else have you offered?
DAVID: It is your spectacle, not mine. Why must you know why He wanted to create us. Isn't the fact of our creation, enough? If He didn't do it, who would?

It is you who constantly harp on about all God’s actions being purposeful, and you wrote: “I would also like to know for sure why he produced humans. I've offered several thoughts.” If you would like to know, and you offer your thoughts on the subject, why are you suddenly so coy about the question? Could it be because your thoughts on the subject are so illogical that you’d rather not pursue it?

dhw: I don’t know why you call your faith in your evolutionary scenario “developed” when you admit that you wander all over the place in trying to justify it,
DAVID: On the contrary I've firmly stated God uses evolutionary processes to create.
dhw: But you wander all over the place (your own expression) when you try to explain why he had to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain, or pre-humans were able to switch on his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for brain enlargement.
DAVID: I'm not wondering. You keep denying my reasonable theory that a balance of nature is required. And his dabble is identified:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/evolving-a-human-brain?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmos+Ma...

As I keep repeating, with my theist hat on I don’t have a problem with the human dabble theory. But as I also keep repeating, your evolutionary balance of nature theory (as opposed to current problems, in which human interference has upset the balance we think is right) simply means that life keeps going, favouring one form of balance or another. You have honestly admitted that it doesn’t make sense to you that your God should have specially designed the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue, the monarch’s lifestyle in order to keep life going till he could dabble with the pre-human brain, and you have admitted that you wander all over the place when trying to find an explanation, so why not just leave it at that?

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DAVID: I don't view it as experimenting. His purpose is always before Him as He oversees the evolution. If you study planetary theory, it is explained that Earth and the other three inner metallic/rocky planets were formed by being bombarded by bodies (planetismals) […] Remember, in my approach I ignore the Bible's description of absolutely all-powerful.

dhw: That does not in any way alter the fact that if he has to adapt to new discoveries at a given stage, whether in relation to asteroids or to the production of humans, he has not got it all planned in advance, and therefore he must be experimenting in his attempts to find the right combination. Since you have no hesitation in limiting his powers, why are you so frightened of the idea that his knowledge might also be limited?

Not limited. See my entry of today: Friday, March 10, 2017, 19:42

dhw: Why is it narrow reasoning to inquire into God’s possible motives, attitudes and nature, but it is not narrow reasoning to say that he does not have a “smidgen” of evil in him (as if you knew him personally) but he may have been powerless to avoid the evil consequences of his quest to produce humans?
DAVID: No human knows a personage like God. Free will has consequences. Should God have made us all saints with limited emotions?

dhw: That is a complete non sequitur. We are talking about God’s nature, not human nature.

And I'm saying we cannot know His nature.

DAVID: It is your spectacle, not mine. Why must you know why He wanted to create us. Isn't the fact of our creation, enough? If He didn't do it, who would?

dhw: It is you who constantly harp on about all God’s actions being purposeful, and you wrote: “I would also like to know for sure why he produced humans. I've offered several thoughts.” If you would like to know, and you offer your thoughts on the subject, why are you suddenly so coy about the question? Could it be because your thoughts on the subject are so illogical that you’d rather not pursue it?

Because I can't fully pursue it. We do not and cannot know God's nature or personality, if we decide in advance, as I have, not to use the Bible.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/evolving-a-human-brain?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmos+Ma...

dhw: As I keep repeating, with my theist hat on I don’t have a problem with the human dabble theory. But as I also keep repeating, your evolutionary balance of nature theory (as opposed to current problems, in which human interference has upset the balance we think is right) simply means that life keeps going, favouring one form of balance or another. You have honestly admitted that it doesn’t make sense to you that your God should have specially designed the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue, the monarch’s lifestyle in order to keep life going till he could dabble with the pre-human brain, and you have admitted that you wander all over the place when trying to find an explanation, so why not just leave it at that?

Because I do make sense to me, and you persist in misinterpreting my comments. All you are referencing are parts of a very necessary balance of nature. Yes, some of the developments make no sense on the surface, but they all contribute to balance. That is my true thought.

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Dhw (to Tony): David doesn’t like any attribution of human qualities to his God, but sincyou are clearly willing to see him as loving, perhaps you will understand why I can see another side to him through the not-so-lovable things he has created. The idea of a spectacle does not exclude love, and I can well believe that your God might for instance love humans who worship him, but it also allows for “selfish amusement” and indifference to suffering.
DAVID: Since you don't believe in him, it allows you to make any supposition you wish about his personality, rather than presume, as I do, that his personality is unknowable.

Of course his personality and indeed his existence are unknowable. Currently nobody knows how life originated, how evolutionary innovation happened, what preceded the Big Bang (if that happened), or if there is life after death. That is why we examine the evidence and speculate with our hypotheses. However, you also presume at various times – with authoritative statements – that your God’s purpose was to create humans, he knew exactly how to achieve his purpose, he does not have a smidgen of evil in him, and he does not experiment. These presumptions form the rigid basis of all your evolutionary theories, and they are wide open to question, since you cannot know any of these things.

DAVID: Why must you know why He wanted to create us. Isn't the fact of our creation, enough? If He didn't do it, who would?
dhw: It is you who constantly harp on about all God’s actions being purposeful, and you wrote: “I would also like to know for sure why he produced humans. I've offered several thoughts.” If you would like to know, and you offer your thoughts on the subject, why are you suddenly so coy about the question? Could it be because your thoughts on the subject are so illogical that you’d rather not pursue it?
DAVID: Because I can't fully pursue it. We do not and cannot know God's nature or personality, if we decide in advance, as I have, not to use the Bible.

Once again, nobody can “fully pursue” it, and that is why we look at the only world we know, and try to extrapolate logical conclusions. We would like to know if there is a God or not. You emphasize that you study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and conclude that there is a God, although this is something we cannot “know”. You would also like to know why he produced life/humans, and I would like to know his nature, but suddenly you object if we study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and extrapolate hypotheses (but not conclusions) from our observations.

dhw: You have honestly admitted that it doesn’t make sense to you that your God should have specially designed the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue, the monarch’s lifestyle in order to keep life going till he could dabble with the pre-human brain, and you have admitted that you wander all over the place when trying to find an explanation, so why not just leave it at that?
DAVID: Because I do make sense to me, and you persist in misinterpreting my comments. All you are referencing are parts of a very necessary balance of nature. Yes, some of the developments make no sense on the surface, but they all contribute to balance. That is my true thought.

But you have agreed that the balance of nature means nothing more than the continuation of life. By your own admission, the only sense you have been able to make of the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution is that your God couldn’t do it any other way and had to keep dabbling to make sure it was heading in the right direction. Solar systems came and went, “until the right one appeared”. So why did he have to design all the “wrong” ones (if he did)? As for organisms, either they have the ability to invent their own lifestyles and wonders (but you don’t accept that any of your examples could have been autonomously designed by the organisms), or your God didn’t know what he was doing and had to keep making corrections (but you don’t accept that your God was experimenting)… These are some of the illogicalities which, again as you yourself have admitted, lead you to wander all over the place. But do please tell me what I have misinterpreted.

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dhw: Of course his personality and indeed his existence are unknowable. Currently nobody knows how life originated, how evolutionary innovation happened, what preceded the Big Bang (if that happened), or if there is life after death. That is why we examine the evidence and speculate with our hypotheses. However, you also presume at various times – with authoritative statements – that your God’s purpose was to create humans, he knew exactly how to achieve his purpose, he does not have a smidgen of evil in him, and he does not experiment. These presumptions form the rigid basis of all your evolutionary theories, and they are wide open to question, since you cannot know any of these things.

I know we are discussing possibilities, but some of what you question are things I believe as I worked through my research from my early agnostic position. I know I can't convince you of my conclusions, some of which are naturally very rigid.

dhw: Once again, nobody can “fully pursue” it, and that is why we look at the only world we know, and try to extrapolate logical conclusions. We would like to know if there is a God or not. You emphasize that you study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and conclude that there is a God, although this is something we cannot “know”. You would also like to know why he produced life/humans, and I would like to know his nature, but suddenly you object if we study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and extrapolate hypotheses (but not conclusions) from our observations.

I never object to covering studies as you list. It is obvious our conclusions differ as we each emphasize different facts.

DAVID: Because I do make sense to me, and you persist in misinterpreting my comments. All you are referencing are parts of a very necessary balance of nature. Yes, some of the developments make no sense on the surface, but they all contribute to balance. That is my true thought.

dhw: But you have agreed that the balance of nature means nothing more than the continuation of life. By your own admission, the only sense you have been able to make of the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution is that your God couldn’t do it any other way and had to keep dabbling to make sure it was heading in the right direction.

I have always said pre-planning and/or dabbling. Those are alternatives, because I do not know if He has any limitations, which He may have.

dhw: Solar systems came and went, “until the right one appeared”. So why did he have to design all the “wrong” ones (if he did)?

As I've pointed out, He may have designed a process at the beginning of the Big Bang to create many varieties of universes, and definitely stepped in to start life when the correct one appeared with the correct Earth. View it as a process He set up, not laboriously designing each solar system. The system did it for Him.

dhw;As for organisms, either they have the ability to invent their own lifestyles and wonders (but you don’t accept that any of your examples could have been autonomously designed by the organisms), or your God didn’t know what he was doing and had to keep making corrections (but you don’t accept that your God was experimenting)… These are some of the illogicalities which, again as you yourself have admitted, lead you to wander all over the place. But do please tell me what I have misinterpreted.

Totally misinterpreted: see above. Pre-planning and dabbling have always been alternative possibilities, since I am not sure how all-powerful He is. Remember I think He used evolutionary processes at all levels; universe forming, solar system forming, Earth forming, life forming, evolution of humans. All we see is evolutionary processes at each step. Yes?

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dhw: Of course his personality and indeed his existence are unknowable. Currently nobody knows how life originated, how evolutionary innovation happened, what preceded the Big Bang (if that happened), or if there is life after death. That is why we examine the evidence and speculate with our hypotheses. However, you also presume at various times – with authoritative statements – that your God’s purpose was to create humans, he knew exactly how to achieve his purpose, he does not have a smidgen of evil in him, and he does not experiment. These presumptions form the rigid basis of all your evolutionary theories, and they are wide open to question, since you cannot know any of these things.
DAVID: I know we are discussing possibilities, but some of what you question are things I believe as I worked through my research from my early agnostic position. I know I can't convince you of my conclusions, some of which are naturally very rigid.

Of course I am questioning some of your beliefs and your rigid conclusions. And I do not accept the argument that I shouldn’t question them because God’s intentions and nature are unknowable, although you yourself make all the above presumptions.

dhw: We would like to know if there is a God or not. You emphasize that you study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and conclude that there is a God, although this is something we cannot “know”. You would also like to know why he produced life/humans, and I would like to know his nature, but suddenly you object if we study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and extrapolate hypotheses (but not conclusions) from our observations.
DAVID: I never object to covering studies as you list. It is obvious our conclusions differ as we each emphasize different facts.

But you do object when I challenge your views on God’s intentions and nature, on the grounds that they are unknowable, even though you think you know at least some of them.

DAVID: Because I do make sense to me, and you persist in misinterpreting my comments. All you are referencing are parts of a very necessary balance of nature. Yes, some of the developments make no sense on the surface, but they all contribute to balance. That is my true thought.
dhw: But you have agreed that the balance of nature means nothing more than the continuation of life. By your own admission, the only sense you have been able to make of the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution is that your God couldn’t do it any other way and had to keep dabbling to make sure it was heading in the right direction.
DAVID: I have always said pre-planning and/or dabbling. Those are alternatives, because I do not know if He has any limitations, which He may have.

Precisely. According to you, God had to design the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue and the monarch’s lifestyle etc. in order to keep life going (“balance of nature”) until he could dabble with the pre-human brain. But this only makes sense to you if his powers are limited, and you don’t know if his powers are limited, so you don’t know if it makes sense. What have I misinterpreted?

dhw: As for organisms, either they have the ability to invent their own lifestyles and wonders (but you don’t accept that any of your examples could have been autonomously designed by the organisms), or your God didn’t know what he was doing and had to keep making corrections (but you don’t accept that your God was experimenting)… These are some of the illogicalities which, again as you yourself have admitted, lead you to wander all over the place. But do please tell me what I have misinterpreted.
DAVID: Totally misinterpreted: see above. Pre-planning and dabbling have always been alternative possibilities, since I am not sure how all-powerful He is.

If he “had to” dabble, it could only be because either those wretched autonomous organisms had got it wrong, or his plans weren’t working out (so he got it wrong). Why is this a misinterpretation?

DAVID: Remember I think He used evolutionary processes at all levels; universe forming, solar system forming, Earth forming, life forming, evolution of humans. All we see is evolutionary processes at each step. Yes?

Yes. We both believe in evolution, and so if God exists, he used evolutionary processes. But you have left out of your summary every (theistic) point at issue between us: the fact that he used evolutionary processes does not mean his purpose from the very beginning was to produce humans, and it does not mean he had to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder before he could fulfil that purpose. Your last statement is spot on: “all we see is evolutionary processes at each step”. Even Dawkins would agree.

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dhw: These presumptions form the rigid basis of all your evolutionary theories, and they are wide open to question, since you cannot know any of these things.[/i]

DAVID: I know we are discussing possibilities, but some of what you question are things I believe as I worked through my research from my early agnostic position. I know I can't convince you of my conclusions, some of which are naturally very rigid.

dhw Of course I am questioning some of your beliefs and your rigid conclusions. And I do not accept the argument that I shouldn’t question them because God’s intentions and nature are unknowable, although you yourself make all the above presumptions.

Of course I make assumptions. Your questions goad me and I think things through and reach what I think are logical possibilities. My presumption answer your questions as far as I can logically.

DAVID: I never object to covering studies as you list. It is obvious our conclusions differ as we each emphasize different facts.

dhw: But you do object when I challenge your views on God’s intentions and nature, on the grounds that they are unknowable, even though you think you know at least some of them.

Based on historical evidence I look for His purpose only, not His personal thinking or personal desires.

DAVID: I have always said pre-planning and/or dabbling. Those are alternatives, because I do not know if He has any limitations, which He may have.

dhw: Precisely. According to you, God had to design the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue and the monarch’s lifestyle etc. in order to keep life going (“balance of nature”) until he could dabble with the pre-human brain. But this only makes sense to you if his powers are limited, and you don’t know if his powers are limited, so you don’t know if it makes sense. What have I misinterpreted?

You are conflating two issues. Yes, He had to design complex lifestyles to maintain a balance of nature, only to allow life's evolution to continue. See the book Nature's IQ . But His limits, if any, have nothing to do with His designs. That is why I propose pre-planning with a back-up of dabbling, if necessary.

dhw: If he “had to” dabble, it could only be because either those wretched autonomous organisms had got it wrong, or his plans weren’t working out (so he got it wrong). Why is this a misinterpretation?

It is a question of 'is He limited in any way'? Since I admit I can't know, dabbling is the back-up, nothing more. Your statement overstates it. He may not need any dabbles.

DAVID: Remember I think He used evolutionary processes at all levels; universe forming, solar system forming, Earth forming, life forming, evolution of humans. All we see is evolutionary processes at each step. Yes?

dhw: Yes. We both believe in evolution, and so if God exists, he used evolutionary processes. But you have left out of your summary every (theistic) point at issue between us: the fact that he used evolutionary processes does not mean his purpose from the very beginning was to produce humans, and it does not mean he had to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder before he could fulfil that purpose. Your last statement is spot on: “all we see is evolutionary processes at each step”. Even Dawkins would agree.

I fully accept the fact that humans are here without a need for them and against all odds. That means purpose for evolution. And you've agreed balance of nature supplied the energy for life to evolve. Evolution was His choice to produce His desired results. Humans are an obvious endpoint, having been around for 200,000 years without changing, after previous rapid advances.

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dhw Of course I am questioning some of your beliefs and your rigid conclusions. And I do not accept the argument that I shouldn’t question them because God’s intentions and nature are unknowable, although you yourself make all the above presumptions.
DAVID: Of course I make assumptions. Your questions goad me and I think things through and reach what I think are logical possibilities. My presumptions answer your questions as far as I can logically.

It is the other way round: I question such assumptions/presumptions as your God’s original purpose being to create humans, that he does not experiment, that he does not contain one smidgen of evil, that he is always in tight control (except when he isn’t in tight control), that organisms are incapable of working out their own lifestyle and natural wonders, and that they were all designed by your God for the purpose of keeping life going until he could dabble humans. As for logical possibilities, see below.

DAVID: Based on historical evidence I look for His purpose only, not His personal thinking or personal desires.

I don’t see how you can separate purpose from personal thinking, and I don’t see why it’s OK to study historical evidence in order to decide whether God exists or not, but not OK to study historical evidence to decide what his intentions and his nature might be. Your argument that they are unknowable applies equally to his existence. That is why we theorize.

DAVID: I have always said pre-planning and/or dabbling. Those are alternatives, because I do not know if He has any limitations, which He may have.
dhw: Precisely. According to you, God had to design the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue and the monarch’s lifestyle etc. in order to keep life going (“balance of nature”) until he could dabble with the pre-human brain. But this only makes sense to you if his powers are limited, and you don’t know if his powers are limited, so you don’t know if it makes sense. What have I misinterpreted?
DAVID: You are conflating two issues. Yes, He had to design complex lifestyles to maintain a balance of nature, only to allow life's evolution to continue.

There is no conflation. Your “had to” theory imposed limitations on him in order to explain why he couldn’t dabble/programme humans in the first place. (“If He is all-powerful then He shouldn't have to use evolutionary processes.” So he’s not all-powerful.) But if he IS all-powerful, he simply chose not to create what he wanted to create until he had designed everything else, and you can’t offer any explanation (that was the theory which originally you said made no sense to you).

dhw: If he “had to” dabble, it could only be because either those wretched autonomous organisms had got it wrong, or his plans weren’t working out (so he got it wrong). Why is this a misinterpretation?
DAVID: It is a question of 'is He limited in any way'? Since I admit I can't know, dabbling is the back-up, nothing more. Your statement overstates it. He may not need any dabbles.

See above. The only alternative you have ever offered to dabbling is pre-programming, i.e. 3.8 billion years ago he preprogrammed the first cells to pass on a brain enlargement programme. But you have no idea why he would have done so if he had the power to fulfil his purpose of creating humans. You know it doesn’t make sense, and yet still you persist with the same scenarios: he planned humans from the start, was able to do it but didn’t (why?), or was not able to do it and was forced to design the weaverbird’s nest and the frog’s tongue until (mysteriously) he WAS able to do it.

DAVID: I fully accept the fact that humans are here without a need for them and against all odds.

Just as you fully accept that all multicellular life is here without a need for it and against all odds, but I accept that humans have a specially enhanced consciousness which we cannot explain.

DAVID: That means purpose for evolution.

The purpose could be the variety of life that we see, with humans perhaps tacked on as an afterthought. Alternatively, as you said yourself, he didn’t know how to create humans (his powers are limited), in which case it is illogical to dismiss the idea that he may have experimented.

DAVID: And you've agreed balance of nature supplied the energy for life to evolve.

Nature supplies the energy, and the balance refers to whichever species can best tap the energy at any given time. In the context of evolutionary history, your “balance of nature” means nothing more than that life goes on – regardless of what form it takes.

DAVID: Evolution was His choice to produce His desired results.

One moment he is limited and has no choice (he must design all the evolutionary varieties until he is capable of enlarging the human brain), and the next he may not be limited and has chosen evolution, but you don’t know why. Utter confusion.

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dhw: I question such assumptions/presumptions as your God’s original purpose being to create humans, that he does not experiment, that he does not contain one smidgen of evil, that he is always in tight control (except when he isn’t in tight control),

He may well be in tight control

dhw: that organisms are incapable of working out their own lifestyle and natural wonders, and that they were all designed by your God for the purpose of keeping life going until he could dabble humans.

It may not require dabbling.

DAVID: Based on historical evidence I look for His purpose only, not His personal thinking or personal desires.

dhw: I don’t see how you can separate purpose from personal thinking,

One can certainly have pure purpose as the only thought without some type of personal gratification.

DAVID: You are conflating two issues. Yes, He had to design complex lifestyles to maintain a balance of nature, only to allow life's evolution to continue.

dhw: There is no conflation. Your “had to” theory imposed limitations on him in order to explain why he couldn’t dabble/programme humans in the first place. (“If He is all-powerful then He shouldn't have to use evolutionary processes.” So he’s not all-powerful.) But if he IS all-powerful, he simply chose not to create what he wanted to create until he had designed everything else, and you can’t offer any explanation

Explanation as above. Evolution can be His choice and He guides it. Of course evolution implies He might be limited , but if it is His method of choice and He guides it, then he is not limited. I'm simply describing the various possibilities. It is why I introduced dabbling vs. pre-planning.

dhw: If he “had to” dabble, it could only be because either those wretched autonomous organisms had got it wrong, or his plans weren’t working out (so he got it wrong). Why is this a misinterpretation?
DAVID: It is a question of 'is He limited in any way'? Since I admit I can't know, dabbling is the back-up, nothing more. Your statement overstates it. He may not need any dabbles.

DAVID: I fully accept the fact that humans are here without a need for them and against all odds.

dhw: The purpose could be the variety of life that we see, with humans perhaps tacked on as an afterthought. Alternatively, as you said yourself, he didn’t know how to create humans (his powers are limited), in which case it is illogical to dismiss the idea that he may have experimented.

And I've noted above, He may well have no limits.

DAVID: And you've agreed balance of nature supplied the energy for life to evolve.

dhw: Nature supplies the energy, and the balance refers to whichever species can best tap the energy at any given time. In the context of evolutionary history, your “balance of nature” means nothing more than that life goes on – regardless of what form it takes.

Will you eve accept the point that the balance supplies the necessary energy for life to continue, and is required?

DAVID: Evolution was His choice to produce His desired results.

dhw: One moment he is limited and has no choice (he must design all the evolutionary varieties until he is capable of enlarging the human brain), and the next he may not be limited and has chosen evolution, but you don’t know why. Utter confusion.

I'm not confused. I just don't fully accept the idea the He is all-powerful as in the Bible. My evidence is all of the evolutionary processes we see. But He may well be all-powerful if guided evolution is His method of choice. Quite clear to me, and should be clear to you.

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dhw: I question such assumptions/presumptions as your God’s original purpose being to create humans, that he does not experiment, that he does not contain one smidgen of evil, that he is always in tight control (except when he isn’t in tight control),
DAVID: He may well be in tight control.
And he may well not be, as you make clear in your two conflicting hypotheses.

dhw: ...that organisms are incapable of working out their own lifestyle and natural wonders, and that they were all designed by your God for the purpose of keeping life going until he could dabble humans.
DAVID: It may not require dabbling.
But it may, as you make clear in your two conflicting hypotheses.

DAVID: Based on historical evidence I look for His purpose only, not His personal thinking or personal desires.
dhw: I don’t see how you can separate purpose from personal thinking,
DAVID: One can certainly have pure purpose as the only thought without some type of personal gratification.

Personal gratification is one form of personal thinking. The desire for a relationship (one of your theories) is another. The desire to watch humans solve problems God himself can’t solve (one of your theories) is another. If you can insist that God’s purpose (which we cannot know) was to produce humans, I don’t know why we shouldn’t ask why he wanted to produce humans. (See my comment under “ruminations”).

DAVID: Evolution can be His choice and He guides it. Of course evolution implies He might be limited , but if it is His method of choice and He guides it, then he is not limited. I'm simply describing the various possibilities. It is why I introduced dabbling vs. pre-planning.

I am delighted that you are now describing your two (hardly various) contradictory possibilities, and that you recognize that we cannot know which of them is correct. Here once more are some alternatives: God did not set out to produce humans, and the vast variety of life forms was produced for its own sake – either by his design or through an autonomous (perhaps God-given) mechanism that created its own designs. (You need not ask why God would want to produce a variety of life forms.) Humans may have been an afterthought, as evolution unfolded, or he may have had some vague idea of producing a consciousness like his own but didn’t know how until some 3.X billion years into the process (maybe he kept on experimenting), or the autonomous inventive mechanism (perhaps God-given) naturally made the leap from the more simple ape brain to the more complex human brain.

Please tell me (1) where these alternative hypotheses (as unproven as your own) fail to match evolutionary history, and (2) why they are not just as convincing as yours.

dhw: ...your “balance of nature” means nothing more than that life goes on – regardless of what form it takes.
DAVID: Will you ever accept the point that the balance supplies the necessary energy for life to continue, and is required?

It is nature that supplies the energy, and the balance at any particular time is formed by whichever organisms are best able to exploit the energy provided. The respective and ever changing balance is the result, not the supplier. I do of course accept that energy is required for life to continue, but that applies with or without humans, and so it has nothing to do with your claim that God designed every life form etc. to keep life going until humans arrived, unless you insist that God was incapable of producing humans until he had designed the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue, and the fly’s compound eye.

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DAVID: One can certainly have pure purpose as the only thought without some type of personal gratification.

dhw: Personal gratification is one form of personal thinking. The desire for a relationship (one of your theories) is another. The desire to watch humans solve problems God himself can’t solve (one of your theories) is another. If you can insist that God’s purpose (which we cannot know) was to produce humans, I don’t know why we shouldn’t ask why he wanted to produce humans.

Of course you can ask. There can be a number of theories as to why He produced us. we've covered them, but there can be no resolution without using the reasons recorded in the Bible. And they might be wrong.

DAVID: Evolution can be His choice and He guides it. Of course evolution implies He might be limited , but if it is His method of choice and He guides it, then he is not limited. I'm simply describing the various possibilities. It is why I introduced dabbling vs. pre-planning.

dhw: I am delighted that you are now describing your two (hardly various) contradictory possibilities, and that you recognize that we cannot know which of them is correct. Here once more are some alternatives: God did not set out to produce humans, and the vast variety of life forms was produced for its own sake – either by his design or through an autonomous (perhaps God-given) mechanism that created its own designs. (You need not ask why God would want to produce a variety of life forms.) Humans may have been an afterthought, as evolution unfolded, or he may have had some vague idea of producing a consciousness like his own but didn’t know how until some 3.X billion years into the process (maybe he kept on experimenting), or the autonomous inventive mechanism (perhaps God-given) naturally made the leap from the more simple ape brain to the more complex human brain.

Please tell me (1) where these alternative hypotheses (as unproven as your own) fail to match evolutionary history, and (2) why they are not just as convincing as yours.

Because some of your proposals take control from God, I find those unacceptable granted that He may have some limits. Those He probably can overcome given time to make corrections. In my reasoning I see overwhelming evidence that humans were the endpoint of evolution. I have previously listed all of those.

dhw: ...your “balance of nature” means nothing more than that life goes on – regardless of what form it takes.
DAVID: Will you ever accept the point that the balance supplies the necessary energy for life to continue, and is required?

dhw: It is nature that supplies the energy, and the balance at any particular time is formed by whichever organisms are best able to exploit the energy provided. The respective and ever changing balance is the result, not the supplier. I do of course accept that energy is required for life to continue, but that applies with or without humans, and so it has nothing to do with your claim that God designed every life form etc. to keep life going until humans arrived, unless you insist that God was incapable of producing humans until he had designed the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue, and the fly’s compound eye.

Perversely the same mis-interpretation. Only a proper balance of nature can supply the energy needed for life to continue throughout evolution. I have shown you improper balances and what happens. He was, of course, capable of producing humans by whatever method He chose, working around limits if they existed.

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We are planning to attack asteroids. We have the smarts to do it, just like God planned:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/nasa-esa-aim-to-ram-asteroid?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmo...

"But instead of trying to blow up such a threat, as in the 1998 science fiction movie Armageddon, the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission intends to prove that an asteroid can be shifted by hitting it with a fast-moving spacecraft launched from Earth.

***

"The mission uses two spacecraft, one to be launched by ESA in 2020, the other by NASA in 2021.

"The ESA spacecraft, called AIM (for Asteroid Impact Mission) will rendezvous with the selected asteroid and go into orbit around it in early 2022.

"The NASA spacecraft, called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be timed to hit the rock a few months later, at a speed of six kilometres per second, while the AIM spacecraft and earthbound telescopes watch.

"The target is a moonlet of 65803 Didymos, a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1996. At the time of impact it will be about 11 million kilometres away.

***

"One of the goals of the mission is to test whether it is possible to hit such a small, distant object with a spacecraft moving at such a high speed. But it’s also important, Cheng says, to see how the asteroid responds to the impact.

"That’s because hitting an asteroid with a spacecraft isn’t like hitting a billiard ball with the cue ball.

"'When we have a high-speed impact on an asteroid, you create a crater,” Cheng says. “You blow pieces back in the direction you came from.”

***

"This is the first time, Cheng says, that scientists will be able to test their models by looking at a crater on an asteroid, knowing exactly what hit it and how fast it was moving. Michel adds that the target moonlet will also be the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft.

“'This is important for science and for companies interested in asteroid mining because so far we don’t have any data regarding what we will find on the surface of such a small body,” he says.

“'Each time we discover a new world we have surprises,” he adds. “The main driver [of this mission] is planetary defence, but it has a lot of scientific implications.'”

Comment: Humans are bright enough to protect ourselves against the dangers of the universe.

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Our big brain allows us to be protected from the dangers in the universe. New studies of the sun offer protection from sun flares:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/solar-jet-stream-promises-better-flare-forecasting?utm...

"Scientists studying 360-degree images of the sun have discovered that deep in its atmosphere, its magnetic field makes looping meanders intriguingly analogous to the earth’s jet stream.

"Technically known as Rossby waves, these meanders were traced by observing their effect on coronal brightpoints — small bright features that dot the sun.

"Their movements can be used to track motions deeper in the solar atmosphere. They are not particularly fast, especially when measured against the huge scale of the sun itself.

***

"However, for three years, from 2011 to 2014, solar scientists had a unique opportunity, because there were three deep-space satellites observing the sun all at once, spaced so their divergent angles allowed the entire surface to be seen simultaneously. Two were a pair known as the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO), specifically designed for the purpose. The third was NASA’s Deep Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which sits directly between the earth and the sun.

"Collectively, the trio was able to monitor the whole shebang until 2014, when something went wrong with one of the STEREO spacecraft and it lost contact with its controllers. But three years of data were more than enough for McIntosh’s team to track the slow movements of the brightpoints and realise what that revealed about the existence of Rossby waves in the underlying magnetic field.

"Rossby waves are important, because on earth changes in the jet stream are major factors in influencing local weather patterns. And now that we know similar features exist in the sun’s magnetic field, McIntosh says, we may be able to learn how they relate to the formation of sunspots, active regions, and solar flares. If so, it opens the door to forecasting solar storms long before they might hit us.

“'This is exciting work,” says Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was not part of the study team. “Those of us interested in the ‘space weather’ effects of solar activity can really applaud.”

"Predicting space weather is important, because solar storms can hurl dangerous radiation at astronauts, damage satellites, interfere with communications and navigation systems, potentially take out electrical generators and wreak havoc on electronics.

“'Estimates put the cost of space weather hazards at $10 billion per year,” says Ilia Roussev, program director in the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences.

"Historically there have occasionally been truly giant solar storms that if replicated today would have a devastating effect on modern technological society.

“'I always tell people we live in the atmosphere of our star,” McIntosh says, referring to the solar wind. “What we have [in terms of technology], it could easily take away any time, in the blink of an eye. But because 99.99% of the time it rises in the morning and sets in the evening without doing any damage, we take it for granted.”

Comment: The neighborhood around a star is dangerous. One reason God may have given us big brains is to protect ourselves from a star's nastiness. It is reasonable this is the only way God could arrange for the development of life on a planet near a star which must have the properties it has. But at least we are in the Goldilocks' zone far from the dangerous part of the galaxy.

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We will have a close passage shortly. Luckily we can track them:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/asteroid-near-miss-a-once-in-900-year-event?utm_source...

"Astronomers both amateur and professional will have a rare opportunity to observe a potentially hazardous asteroid in coming days. It will be the asteroid’s closest approach to Earth in 400 years, and will not come as close again for another 500 years.

"The relatively large asteroid, known as 2014 JO25, will be at its most visible on April 19 (12:24 UTC) when it will come within 1.8 million km of Earth. This is very close for an asteroid of its size, according to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

"Even though there is no chance the asteroid will collide with the planet – it will be almost 5 times as far away as the moon – it is still one of the small proportion of about 16,000 identified Near Earth Asteroids (NRAs) classified as potentially hazardous, coming within 7.48 million km of the planet.

"The asteroid, with a diameter of about 600 metres, is the most significant near-approach since the 5-km-wide Toutatis asteroid passed Earth in 2004. The next close encounter with a sizeable asteroid is expected to be in 2027, when the 800-metre-wide 1999 AN10 comes within a mere 380,000 kilometres.

"Just 5% of NRAs have a diameter of more than 1 km. About half are less than 140 metres. The asteroid that did in the dinosaurs – the Chicxulub impactor, considered responsible for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago – is estimated to have been at least 10 km wide.

"With an albedo about twice as bright as the Moon, 2014 JO25 should be easy to spot with a small telescope, or even binoculars. Because of its relative proximity to Earth, its position it in the night sky will depend on your location. Fortunately for skygazers, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has provided a handy tool that lets you enter your terrestrial co-ordinates and find out the celestial location to turn your eyes towards."

Comment: From the theistic point of view, God created the universe and it appears that asteroids were a necessary result. He also gave us the brains to solve the problem for our home planet.

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DAVID’s comment: From the theistic point of view, God created the universe and it appears that asteroids were a necessary result. He also gave us the brains to solve the problem for our home planet.

Please explain why you think this particular asteroid is necessary, and please tell us if you think your God is manipulating this particular asteroid or it is simply doing its own thing.

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DAVID’s comment: From the theistic point of view, God created the universe and it appears that asteroids were a necessary result. He also gave us the brains to solve the problem for our home planet.

dhw: Please explain why you think this particular asteroid is necessary, and please tell us if you think your God is manipulating this particular asteroid or it is simply doing its own thing.

What a weird response. Asteroids appear to be a natural part of the development of our solar system and probably exist in all solar systems. It was presented to show a specific aspect of the dangers in the universe we have to live with. It is certainly doing its own thing.

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dhw: Please explain why you think this particular asteroid is necessary, and please tell us if you think your God is manipulating this particular asteroid or it is simply doing its own thing.

DAVID: What a weird response. Asteroids appear to be a natural part of the development of our solar system and probably exist in all solar systems. It was presented to show a specific aspect of the dangers in the universe we have to live with. It is certainly doing its own thing.

What a coincidence! I thought your own response was the weird one! I really don’t think we need to be reminded about the dangers of the universe we live in, which range from asteroids careering round the universe – uncontrolled by your God, which leaves wide open the question of how much control he really has over the environment – to fatal diseases borne by divinely programmed or guided bacteria. Your God has apparently created all these and is now watching to see if we can solve the problems (but we mustn’t ask why because our answer might “humanize” him).

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dhw: What a coincidence! I thought your own response was the weird one! I really don’t think we need to be reminded about the dangers of the universe we live in, which range from asteroids careering round the universe – uncontrolled by your God, which leaves wide open the question of how much control he really has over the environment – to fatal diseases borne by divinely programmed or guided bacteria. Your God has apparently created all these and is now watching to see if we can solve the problems (but we mustn’t ask why because our answer might “humanize” him).

You can always ask why. Just don't put 'God is human in His thinking' in your propositions.

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dhw: What a coincidence! I thought your own response was the weird one! I really don’t think we need to be reminded about the dangers of the universe we live in, which range from asteroids careering round the universe – uncontrolled by your God, which leaves wide open the question of how much control he really has over the environment – to fatal diseases borne by divinely programmed or guided bacteria. Your God has apparently created all these and is now watching to see if we can solve the problems (but we mustn’t ask why because our answer might “humanize” him).
DAVID: You can always ask why. Just don't put 'God is human in His thinking' in your propositions.

Firstly, it is impossible to offer any answer to the question of God’s purposes in creating life and humans without attributing some recognizable human attribute to him; secondly you have agreed that God may well have certain human attributes; and thirdly you have admitted that you yourself believe he does have certain human attributes. Now please tell me why we should not argue that if God created the universe, life and humans, he had a reason for doing so and the reason may well be in terms perfectly comprehensible to ourselves, including those you yourself have suggested, e.g. loneliness, boredom, wanting a relationship, delighting in the pleasures of own work, enjoying watching us solve the problems he has set us. We can’t KNOW, of course, but then we can’t even KNOW if God exists. That is why we discuss these matters.

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dhw: Firstly, it is impossible to offer any answer to the question of God’s purposes in creating life and humans without attributing some recognizable human attribute to him; secondly you have agreed that God may well have certain human attributes; and thirdly you have admitted that you yourself believe he does have certain human attributes.

Please do not assign me with any firm beliefs about God's possible human characteristics. Those are discussion points only. As I look at reality I see purpose, and certainly that is a human attribute, but beyond that point I find no evidence of anything else. God's love is a religious proposition as an example.

dhw: Now please tell me why we should not argue that if God created the universe, life and humans, he had a reason for doing so and the reason may well be in terms perfectly comprehensible to ourselves, including those you yourself have suggested, e.g. loneliness, boredom, wanting a relationship, delighting in the pleasures of own work, enjoying watching us solve the problems he has set us. We can’t KNOW, of course, but then we can’t even KNOW if God exists. That is why we discuss these matters.

As you stated, we cannot KNOW if any of this applies. Back to angels on the head of a pin. I view God as an eternal consciousness with no need for the companionship your list implies. It is reasonable to assume He is pleased with his creations. As a mind, a consciousness, He will be introspective. All conscious minds are.

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DAVID: Please do not assign me with any firm beliefs about God's possible human characteristics. Those are discussion points only. As I look at reality I see purpose, and certainly that is a human attribute, but beyond that point I find no evidence of anything else. God's love is a religious proposition as an example.

But the only purpose you see is the production of humans, and then you refuse to ask why he would want to produce humans, which I would have expected to be a pretty important question!

dhw: Now please tell me why we should not argue that if God created the universe, life and humans, he had a reason for doing so and the reason may well be in terms perfectly comprehensible to ourselves, including those you yourself have suggested, e.g. loneliness, boredom, wanting a relationship, delighting in the pleasures of own work, enjoying watching us solve the problems he has set us. We can’t KNOW, of course, but then we can’t even KNOW if God exists. That is why we discuss these matters.

DAVID: As you stated, we cannot KNOW if any of this applies. Back to angels on the head of a pin. I view God as an eternal consciousness with no need for the companionship your list implies. It is reasonable to assume He is pleased with his creations. As a mind, a consciousness, He will be introspective. All conscious minds are.

If it is reasonable to assume he is pleased with his creations, then why is it unreasonable to suggest that he created them in order to derive pleasure from them – and what is the difference between deriving pleasure and enjoying?

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DAVID: Please do not assign me with any firm beliefs about God's possible human characteristics. Those are discussion points only. As I look at reality I see purpose, and certainly that is a human attribute, but beyond that point I find no evidence of anything else. God's love is a religious proposition as an example.

dhw: But the only purpose you see is the production of humans, and then you refuse to ask why he would want to produce humans, which I would have expected to be a pretty important question!

I don't know why and neither do you. I presume to share in His consciousness and relate to Him through it. I've said this before.

dhw; If it is reasonable to assume he is pleased with his creations, then why is it unreasonable to suggest that he created them in order to derive pleasure from them – and what is the difference between deriving pleasure and enjoying?

Tony has covered this. I'm sure He has been pleased with his creations, but not with the bad results of granting free will.

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DAVID: As I look at reality I see purpose, and certainly that is a human attribute, but beyond that point I find no evidence of anything else. God's love is a religious proposition as an example.
dhw: But the only purpose you see is the production of humans, and then you refuse to ask why he would want to produce humans, which I would have expected to be a pretty important question!
DAVID: I don't know why and neither do you. I presume to share in His consciousness and relate to Him through it. I've said this before.

And I've said this before: we don’t even know if God exists, how life originated, the true nature of the universe etc., but we discuss them endlessly. The only unknown factor you are not prepared to discuss is your God’s purpose for producing humans, even though you insist that the whole of “creation” is related to that one purpose. You don’t and can’t “know” that either, so why do you bother to discuss it? Fortunately, however, there are now signs that you are coming down off your theistic fence!

dhw: If it is reasonable to assume he is pleased with his creations, then why is it unreasonable to suggest that he created them in order to derive pleasure from them – and what is the difference between deriving pleasure and enjoying?
DAVID: Tony has covered this. I'm sure He has been pleased with his creations, but not with the bad results of granting free will.

You have not answered my question. If you are sure he has been pleased with his creations, why do you refuse to consider the possibility that he created them in the hope that they would please him, i.e. give him pleasure, i.e. enable him to enjoy them? (But see “Purpose and design”.)

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DAVID: I don't know why and neither do you. I presume to share in His consciousness and relate to Him through it. I've said this before.

dhw: The only unknown factor you are not prepared to discuss is your God’s purpose for producing humans, even though you insist that the whole of “creation” is related to that one purpose. You don’t and can’t “know” that either, so why do you bother to discuss it? Fortunately, however, there are now signs that you are coming down off your theistic fence!

You are looking for a purpose behind a purpose! God's purpose in producing humans does not have to have a God reason behind it. I see his purpose in how He engineered the evolution of humans from monkeys 23 million years ago. See yesterday's entry. You want me to see into God's mind. I can't! Again you are asking a humanizing question about God.

dhw: If it is reasonable to assume he is pleased with his creations, then why is it unreasonable to suggest that he created them in order to derive pleasure from them – and what is the difference between deriving pleasure and enjoying?
DAVID: Tony has covered this. I'm sure He has been pleased with his creations, but not with the bad results of granting free will.

dhw: You have not answered my question. If you are sure he has been pleased with his creations, why do you refuse to consider the possibility that he created them in the hope that they would please him, i.e. give him pleasure, i.e. enable him to enjoy them?

You want to keep humanizing Him. Fine. He might well be pleased and have pleasure. That is beside the points I make as to his purpose. I don't care about God's thinking leading up to his choice of purpose, because I cannot find any evidence to support a supposition about it.

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dhw: The only unknown factor you are not prepared to discuss is your God’s purpose for producing humans, even though you insist that the whole of “creation” is related to that one purpose. You don’t and can’t “know” that either, so why do you bother to discuss it? Fortunately, however, there are now signs that you are coming down off your theistic fence!

You are looking for a purpose behind a purpose! God's purpose in producing humans does not have to have a God reason behind it. I see his purpose in how He engineered the evolution of humans from monkeys 23 million years ago. See yesterday's entry. You want me to see into God's mind. I can't! Again you are asking a humanizing question about God.

As an afterthought let me guide everyone to my entry about the appearance of a guided evolution for humans coming from monkey 23 million years ago. Our bipedalism makes us distinct from primates who aren't, and That is everybody but us!

The entry: Monday, April 17, 2017, 18:06

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NASA is working on it. The giant outer planets keep most of them away , but not all:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2172233-nasa-outlines-its-plans-to-deal-with-a-lar...

"The chances of a large asteroid ending up on a collision course with Earth are slim, but NASA is making plans for how to detect and deflect such a catastrophe. Over the next decade, the space agency is planning to design and test ways to destroy an asteroid headed for our planet, or tug it off its path towards us.

"There are three techniques that could be used depending on the size of an incoming asteroid and the amount of warning time we have before it hits, he says. One is a gravity tractor, a heavy spacecraft that hovers near the asteroid so that its gravity can tug on the asteroid and pull it off its course.
'
“That could be enhanced if the spacecraft could collect mass, like a large boulder, from the surface to enhance gravitational attraction,” Lindley Johnson at NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office in Washington, DC said in a 20 June press conference. Another plan is to use a so-called kinetic impactor, deliberately crashing a spacecraft into the asteroid to change its speed and orbit. Johnson says this method will be tested in NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission scheduled to launch in the summer of 2021.

"A nuclear device could also be used against an incoming asteroid to either deflect it or break it up into pieces small enough that they would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

"In a report, NASA says they plan to develop mission plans and carry out flight demonstrations on harmless near-Earth objects for both the gravity tractor and kinetic impactor techniques.

NASA is also working with FEMA to prepare emergency responders to help warn people who may be in a place where an asteroid could hit, and to step in with emergency services if that happens.

"NASA works with ground-based telescopes around the world to detect and track near-Earth objects. That data is sent to the international asteroid warning network and the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, which can warn countries of an impending asteroid impact.

“'With the internet, this information about a detection of an asteroid that could be a threat is going to be instantly out. It’s not something that can be hidden. But our processes and protocols are designed to verify and validate that information,” Johnson said."

Comment: Not science fiction and very important if we don't want to be dinosaurs.

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A 'city-killer'-sized rock:

https://www.progressnews.network/2019/07/26/asteroid-2019-ok-just-missed-earth-and-scie...

"An undated image of an asteroid in space. NASA confirmed that on Thursday Asteroid 2019 OK passed about 73,000 kilometers from Earth, roughly one-fifth the distance to the moon.

***

"This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, roughly 100 meters wide, and moving quickly along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers of Earth. That’s one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”

“'It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” said Brown, an associate professor with Australia’s Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. He later noted, “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”

"The asteroid’s presence was only discovered earlier this week by separate astronomy teams in Brazil and the United States. Information about its size and path was announced just hours before it rocketed past Earth, Brown said.

“'It shook me out my morning complacency,” he said. “It’s probably the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth in quite a number of years.”

"So how did the event almost go unnoticed?

"First, there’s the issue of size, Duffy said. Asteroid 2019 OK is a sizable chunk of rock, but it’s nowhere near as big as the ones capable of causing an event like the dinosaurs’ extinction. More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are 1 kilometer or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners (my bold)

***

"The last-minute detection is yet another sign of how much remains unknown about space and a sobering reminder of the very real threat asteroids can pose, Duffy said.
“It should worry us all quite frankly,” he said. “It’s not a Hollywood movie. It is a clear and present danger.”

"Duffy said astronomers have a nickname for the kind of space rock that just came so close to Earth: “City-killer asteroids.” If the asteroid had struck Earth, most of it would have probably reached the ground, resulting in devastating damage, Brown said.

***

"Scientists are working on developing at least two approaches to deflecting potentially harmful asteroids, Duffy said. One strategy involves gently pushing the asteroid slowly over time off its course and away from Earth, he said. The other, which he called a “very elegant solution,” is the gravity tractor. If an asteroid is detected early enough, it could be possible to divert it using the gravity of a spacecraft, according to NASA.

"People shouldn’t try to “blast it with a nuke,” Duffy said.

“'It makes for a great Hollywood film,” he said. “The challenge with a nuke is that it may or not work, but it would definitely make the asteroid radioactive.”

"In light of Asteroid 2019 OK, Duffy stressed the importance of investing in a “global dedicated approach” to detecting asteroids because “sooner or later there will be one with our name on it. It’s just a matter of when, not if.”

“'We don’t have to go the way of the dinosaurs,” he said. “We actually have the technology to find and deflect certainly these smaller asteroids if we commit to it now.'”

Comment: WOW! At least we know about the big, big ones that wiped out the dinosaurs.

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dhw: For the sake of argument, I am accepting the existence of your God. I will also accept that humans are special, in view of their enhanced consciousness. Once more: what I am disputing is your claim that he planned humans right from the start and geared the whole of evolution to producing them. I have offered alternatives to your preprogramming and dabbling scenario: 1) He wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but didn’t know how to do it, and so kept experimenting (which fits in perfectly with your new belief that your God may be limited in his powers. 2) He wanted to produce an ever-changing spectacle, and humans came into his mind as an afterthought. Both these scenarios explain the higgledy-piggledy nature of life’s history. Why, then, is it so important to you that your God should have planned humans right from the start, when this hypothesis leads to so much confusion, as below?

DAVID: ...why dangerous asteroids? He must have had to include them as He evolved the universe. Therefore limited to some degree.

dhw: “Must have” means he is limited. Then you go on to say: “I don't know that God's limitations, if any, required that He use an evolutionary process.” Why “if any” if he must have had to use asteroids? If he is forced by his own laws of nature to use asteroids, what else might he have been forced to do?

Note Tony's comment. God's universe must have required asteroids, and then in my sense He is limited.

> DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans. (Followed later by the explanation:) He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.

dhw: Limitations are your explanation for why he couldn’t produce us more directly and therefore had to design every other life form etc. If you use limitations as your explanation for his having to create everything else, but then you argue that he may not be limited, you are once more confronted with the non-sense of your scenario! That is why I keep asking why it is so important to you to believe humans were planned from the very beginning.

Limitations are only one possibility, not the only explanation available as I have indicated. Why can't I look at it in several ways, all of which are logical approaches to the problem. Perhaps evolutionary change was preferred. I'm not wedded to any of the possibilities of explaining His methods. Humans had to be planned from the beginning. They are here against all odds, not required by nature's stresses; nothing more is required to recognize the reason I accept the premise.

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4128 views

Why are asteroids a sign of limitation? They serve a vital role as transport mechanisms for elemental material throughout the universe. Further, "there is a time to build, and a time to destroy". As they'be not inhibited his plans in any way, I see no reason to view them as a limitation.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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4101 views

Tony: Why are asteroids a sign of limitation? They serve a vital role as transport mechanisms for elemental material throughout the universe. Further, "there is a time to build, and a time to destroy". As they'be not inhibited his plans in any way, I see no reason to view them as a limitation.

They are dangerous. Think of Chicxulub. The earth is now well populated with humans. They can be very dangerous to major metropolitan hubs.

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4070 views

Gravity is dangerous too! Does that make it a sign of weakness?

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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4083 views

Tony: Gravity is dangerous too! Does that make it a sign of weakness?

Yes, I can accidently fall off a cliff, but compared to asteroids, at least I make my own choices about my dangerous activities. Asteroids may not be beyond our control, but we have to use our human smarts to steer them off course.

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4092 views

It is difficult to find all of them:

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-unconfirmed-near-earth.html

"Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are small solar system bodies whose orbits sometimes bring them close to the Earth, potentially threatening a collision. NEOs are tracers of the composition, dynamics and environmental conditions throughout the solar system and of the history of our planetary system. Most meteorites come from NEOs, which are thus one of our key sources of knowledge about the solar system's development. Because some of them are easier to reach with spacecraft than the Moon or planets, NEOs are potential targets for NASA missions. The total number of known NEOs exceeds 18000. The discovery rate has risen rapidly recently, driven by in part the 1998 mandate of Congress to identify 90 percent of NEOs larger than 1 km (in 2005 Congress, recognizing the danger posed even by smaller NEOs, extended the mandate to sizes as small as 140 meters.)

"The importance of NEOs for science and safety has emphasized the need for accurate statistics of the population – but there is a problem. The discovery process for NEOs requires distinguishing between known and unknown targets, and then following up previously unknown targets to measure their orbits. The catalog of orbital elements of known NEOs, their size-frequency distribution, as well as the region of sky visited by telescopes, all serve as inputs for deriving debiased population models. But many NEOs are spotted and reported, but follow-up observations are not done.

"CfA astronomers Peter Vereš, Matthew Payne, Matthew Holman, Gareth Williams, Sonia Keys, and Ian Boardman (all are affiliated with the Minor Planet Center at the CfA) and a colleague have analyzed the NEO reports from 2013 to 2016; in this over 170,000 objects (including comets) were reported as likely candidates. By tracking down the list of candidates submitted to the minor Planet Center and using statistical tools, the scientists estimate that about 18 percent of all NEO candidates remain unconfirmed. They point to several reasons including delays in reporting the detection; the object is moving, and the scientists found that delaying the initial report from two to ten hours results in doubling the number of unconfirmed detections (the delay makes it more difficult for follow-ups to locate the moving source). Another issue is that unconfirmed NEOs tend to be much fainter and harder to follow up. The scientists conclude that the number of unconfirmed NEO candidates could be large, in the thousands, and emphasize the need for surveys to rapidly submit detection reports.

Comment: Even the small ones can create great damage. The Chicxulub was 5-9 kilometers in size and certainly we have found all of those by now.

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3804 views

Danger can be in any direction:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05969-2?utm_source=briefing-dy&utm_mediu...

"A NASA-funded telescope network devoted to detecting space rocks that could crash into Earth will expand into the Southern Hemisphere, which currently lacks a large-scale asteroid-surveillance effort. The additional observatories will not only spot asteroids that could harm people, but also detect comets, supernovae and other benign celestial objects.

"NASA confirmed on 13 August that it will provide US$3.8 million over the next 4 years to support the construction and operation of two asteroid-hunting observatories south of the Equator. Researchers plan to build one facility in South Africa, but are still deciding on a location for the second outpost. The observatories will join two existing telescopes on the islands of Maui and Hawaii as part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which is run by the University of Hawaii.

"Three Northern Hemisphere observatories, including ATLAS, spotted more than 95% of the 2,057 near-Earth asteroids discovered in 2017. But these northern surveys are blind to roughly 30% of the southern sky — and to any asteroids in that region that could hit Earth.

“'By placing telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll enhance the ability to protect the planet,” says Tim Spahr of the astronomy consultancy NEO Sciences near Boston, Massachusetts. “There will always be things we can’t see from the north.”

***

"The southern ATLAS units’ primary purpose, however, will be to spot relatively small asteroids that bigger telescopes miss. The asteroid that scientists believe wiped out the dinosaurs was 9 kilometres in diameter, but much smaller space rocks can also inflict serious damage. The mid-air explosion of a 20-metre asteroid in 2013 resulted in burns, cuts and broken bones for people in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. And researchers think that a 50-metre asteroid devastated thousands of square kilometres of Russian forest in the 1908 Tunguska event.

***

"...the current ATLAS telescopes shine at picking out small objects that are much closer to Earth — within 7.5 million kilometres of the planet. They do so by conducting relatively rapid scans of the entire sky, which gives researchers more opportunities to detect diminutive asteroids as soon as the objects are visible from the ground.

"ATLAS also has software optimized to detect fast-moving objects. As a result, the network can spot asteroids roughly the size of the Chelyabinsk and Tunguska rocks a few days to a week before impact, says John Tonry, the founder and principal investigator of ATLAS, who is based at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, in Honolulu. In early June, the system proved its mettle by providing data on the trajectory of a 1.8-metre asteroid called 2018 LA that swept over Africa. Researchers were subsequently able to find fragments of this space rock in Botswana. Since it started making observations in 2015, ATLAS has discovered 171 asteroids whose path brings them close to Earth’s orbit.

"Establishing relatively inexpensive ATLAS systems in the south will enable astronomers “to cover the entire night sky every day or two to provide as much warning as we can”, says Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer for NASA in Washington DC.

"After the southern ATLAS observatories come online, “we’ll have close to round-the-clock coverage of the night sky”, says Larry Denneau, an ATLAS co-principal investigator at the University of Hawaii. “The more eyes you have looking, the better.'”

Comment: A necessary protection the dinosaurs wish they had.

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3769 views

Just started:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-space-radar-will-hunt-planet-threatening...

"A new tool promises to ramp up this brand of science by offering more detailed astronomical radar capabilities than ever before. The team behind a pioneering radar system at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia released their first results last month at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, revealing unprecedented detail on the moon and detecting a near-Earth asteroid. The telescope’s novel radar system, called Next Generation Radar (ngRADAR), “produced results that were beyond expectations,” says Flora Paganelli, a project scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO’s) radar division.

***

"The ngRADAR system uses the Green Bank Telescope as a huge transmitting antenna, and it uses the Very Long Baseline Array of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., Hawaii and the Virgin Islands as a miles-wide receiver. Green Bank has a 100-meter-diameter dish—a radio telescope’s equivalent of a mirror—making it the largest steerable antenna on Earth, uniquely suited to this job.

***

"Tracking asteroids is great fun for planetary scientists, who scour these chunks of rock for clues to our solar system’s past, and it’s also crucial for humanity. The best chance we have of protecting ourselves against Earth-bound asteroids is by detecting them early and learning about their properties, such as their size and density. “The sooner we know about the risk and the more we know about the object, the better we can address the situation,” Taylor says.

"The ngRADAR system is coming online at a particularly critical time for planetary defense and radio astronomy. After the catastrophic collapse of Puerto Rico’s famed Arecibo Observatory, only one other active radar astronomy facility remains: NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar, part of the Deep Space Network, which communicates with spacecraft across the solar system. Putting all of humanity’s eggs in Goldstone’s basket is a particularly risky move, especially because it “recently experienced an 18-month-long failure, leaving us without an essential planetary defense capability for an extended period of time,” says planetary scientist Jean-Luc Margot of the University of California, Los Angeles. The ngRADAR system helps to fill the gap left by Arecibo and complements the existing Goldstone facility, strengthening humanity’s lines of defense.

***

"The team also plans to harness the capabilities of the upcoming expansion of the Very Large Array, known as ngVLA, which will make ngRADAR the most sophisticated planetary radar in history over the coming decade. “In this future configuration, the system will exceed Arecibo's sensitivity and allow detections at larger distances,” Margot says."

Comment: dhw will a why God made dangerous asteroids. I don't know but we have the God-give brains to fight them.

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545 views

Only 149,000 miles away:

https://sciencealert.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3996984deafc554c16e8bdad6&id...

"Depending on your location, the newly found asteroid 2023 EY will pass by our planet late Thursday night or Friday morning at a distance of just 240,000 kilometers (149,000 miles) – a little less than two-thirds the distance of the Moon.

"That may sound uncomfortably close, but space is big. A speck like 2023 EY poses no threat to any of us.

"At just 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter, it's roughly the same size as the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Siberia in 2013 and caused a range of injuries with its shock wave. Fortunately 2023 EY won't even enter our atmosphere.

***

"What's particularly cool is that this asteroid was only first spotted on Monday, March 13.

"It was picked up by a telescope at the Sutherland Observing Station in South Africa – which is one of four telescopes that make up the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) network, established by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA to provide an asteroid impact early warning system.

"With two telescopes in Hawaii, one in Chile, and one in South Africa, the goal of ATLAS is to be able to get at least a few days of notice before an asteroid gets uncomfortably close to Earth.

"And now we know that we can successfully throw an asteroid off its course using rockets, thanks to the recent DART mission, this advanced warning will be crucial.

"2023 EY is classified as an Apollo NEO, or near-Earth object. This is the biggest group of NEOs we currently know about, with 17,540 Apollo asteroids as of February 2023."

Comment: with all these telescopes on watch we have a marked degree of safety.

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492 views

Car size just yesterday :

https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/car-size-asteroid-discovered-2-days-ago-fli...

"An asteroid discovered Tuesday (April 9) made an extremely close, but harmless, pass by planet Earth today (April 11).

"Asteroid 2024 GJ2 is roughly the size of a car and, since its discovery this week, astronomers calculated that the space rock would graze by Earth at a mere 12-thousand-mile (19.3-thousand-kilometer) distance — that's just three percent the distance between the Earth and the moon. 2024 GJ2 measures between 2.5 and 5 meters (8.2 and 16 feet), according to the European Space Agency (ESA). This means it's an asteroid with a weight-class that would have burned up in Earth's atmosphere, if its orbit happened to intersect ours more directly.

"Astronomers believe the asteroid's closest approach distance to Earth occurred at 2:28:42 p.m. EDT (18:28:42 GMT) on Thursday, at a distance of 7,641 miles (12,298 kilometers)."

Comment: discovery two days earlier. Is that enough time to send up a diverting rocket? The asteroid is tiny compared to Chicxulub, but if one of this size hits, the locality won't enjoy it.

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173 views

Use several detectors:

https://www.universetoday.com/167353/a-mission-to-find-10-million-near-earth-asteroids-...

"So far, scientists have found around 34,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that could serve as humanity’s stepping stone to the stars. These balls of rock and ice hold valuable resources as we expand throughout the solar system, making them valuable real estate in any future space economy. But the 34,000 we know of only make up a small percentage of the total number of asteroids in our vicinity – some estimates theorize that up to 1 billion asteroids larger than a modern car exist near Earth. A project from the Trans Astronautics Corp (TransAstra), an asteroid-hunting start-up based in California, hopes to find the missing billion.

***

"To put it bluntly, the problem is twofold—brightness and speed. Most ground-based observatories have long exposure times, allowing them to capture brighter but more stationary objects. NEAs, on the other hand, zip by the planet quickly and typically are so faint that the long exposure times on most observatories fail to see them at all. Since they move multiple pixels during each exposure, they don’t appear bright enough to capture in this kind of survey.

***

"Sutter Ultra would be three separate systems, each containing over one hundred 30 cm telescopes. They would fly in coordination in a type of orbit called a heliocentric Psuedo Geocentric Distant Retrograde (PRO) oribt. This would allow all three spacecraft to regularly focus on Earth and triangulate their readings in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

"Once the data has been captured, TransAstra has developed an algorithm to track individual asteroids on the paths they could travel throughout the image. They also released a neat explainer video that details the process they use and how it’s superior to existing asteroid tracking techniques.

"The company’s calculations show that it is by far superior. Their write-up for the Sutter Ultra project estimates that the program could find 300x the total number of NEAs humanity has ever found in only its first year of operation. That would garner an astonishing 10 million asteroid finds every year, or 19 every minute of every day. And yet, it would still only be 1% of the total number of NEAs out there.

"If that wasn’t enough reason to be interested in the project, Sutter Ultra can also be used to track space debris, which is becoming an ever-increasing problem as most and most junk starts to fill the orbital space. Plenty of companies have developed business models around deorbiting space junk or zapping it with lasers, but if it lives up to the hype, Sutter Ultra would be by far the best way to track it."

Comment: If we plan to be on Earth for a long time, this project is a must do.

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150 views

A new one discovered in Greenland under the glacier. See the map illustration:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/16/a-massive-crater-hides-beneath-greenlands-ice/

"There’s something big lurking beneath Greenland’s ice. Using airborne ice-penetrating radar, scientists have discovered a 31-kilometer-wide crater — larger than the city of Paris — buried under as much as 930 meters of ice in northwest Greenland.

"The meteorite that slammed into Earth and formed the pit would have been about 1.5 kilometers across, researchers say. That’s large enough to have caused significant environmental damage across the Northern Hemisphere, a team led by glaciologist Kurt Kjær of the University of Copenhagen reports November 14 in Science Advances.

"Although the crater has not been dated, data from glacial debris as well as ice-flow simulations suggest that the impact may have happened during the Pleistocene Epoch, between 2.6 million and 11,700 years ago. The discovery could breathe new life into a controversial hypothesis that suggests that an impact about 13,000 years ago triggered a mysterious 1,000-year cold snap known as the Younger Dryas.

***

"The object is almost certainly an impact crater, the researchers say. “It became clear that our idea had been right from the beginning,” Kjær says. What’s more, it is not only the first crater found in Greenland, but also one of the 25 or so largest craters yet spotted on Earth. And it has held its shape beautifully, from its elevated rim to its bowl-shaped depression. (my bold)

***

"On the ground, the team hunted for geochemical and geologic signatures of an asteroid impact within nearby sediments. Sampling from within the crater itself was impossible, as it remains covered by ice. But just beyond the edge of the ice, meltwater from the base of the glacier had, over the years, deposited sediment. The scientists collected a sediment sample from within that glacial outwash and several from just outside of it.

"The outwash sample contained several telltale signs of an impact: “shocked” quartz grains with deformed crystal lattices and glassy grains that may represent flash-melted rock. The sample also contained elevated concentrations of certain elements, including nickel, cobalt, platinum and gold, relative to what’s normally found in Earth’s crust. That elemental profile points not only to an asteroid impact, the researchers say, but also suggests that the impactor was a relatively rare iron meteorite."

Comment: This shows why the existing asteroids need to be identified and monitored and we learn how to block t hem. Obviously Chixculub was the last of the big ones.

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Watching asteroids (Introduction)

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; also the sun's dangers

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming

Watching asteroids: keeping them away.

Watching asteroids: a close one is coming; it came this week

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids; possible damage

Watching asteroids: many near Earth objects not found

Watching asteroids: new watchers in southern hemisphere

Watching asteroids: new radar system:

Watching asteroids: near miss

Watching asteroids: a new small near miss

Watching asteroids: a way to find millions

Watching asteroids; Earth has lots of craters