DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, November 14, 2014, 12:51 (3445 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Maybe what he [God] wishes is an unpredictable outcome. If he thinks like us (as you have maintained), he'll enjoy the excitement of the unpredictable. Do you get as much enjoyment watching sport, films etc. when you already know the outcome in advance?
DAVID: Not likely. I don't know if God is omniscient, but I think He is all purposeful at heart.-You did not answer my question. People who watch sport and who watch films also do so for a purpose. And the makers of the games and the films plan for unpredictability.
 
dhw: I am debating with you here on a theistic level. With my theist hat on, it makes perfect sense for God to invent a mechanism that will do its own inventing, but your imagination is limited to a specific concept of God: namely, that he knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it (with a dabble here and there). And what he wanted - in your scenario - was to create humans. It's not even clear why he wanted to create humans.
DAVID: Don't you like being here with the sentience we have? Don't you enjoy our existence? You sound very ungrateful to me. Do you have another suggestion of something or some one for Him to create? You think He doesn't have purposes? Why bother going to the trouble of a universe and all those animals and plants? Just fiddling around I guess. Phew!-I have no doubt that if God exists, he had a purpose in creating life. But I'm not convinced that WE are that purpose, or even if we are, I don't know his purpose for creating us. I love being here (so do many atheists) and am delighted to have had the opportunity to live my life. Lots of people have been less fortunate than me. What does that prove? That God loves us? That God doesn't love us? That God is enjoying the show? That God is fed up with the show? None of these speculations make your predictable 3.7-billion-year computer programme (or direct dabble) for the monarch butterfly's life cycle any more likely than my unpredictable inventive mechanism (possibly created by your God). Why do you insist that only a planned and predictable spectacle can constitute a purpose?-dhw: You have faith in something totally inexplicable and unimaginable. Atheists have faith in something totally inexplicable and unimaginable. That's why agnostics sit on the fence.
DAVID: You don't like my use of 'evidence beyond a reasonable doubt'? A reasonable solution to the issue of 'why' is to reason to the best solution to the question. If you accept cause and effect, and understand the question of 'why is there anything?', there has to be a first cause, which must, per force, be supernatural. Just because you cannot get yourself to image that possibility, does not mean that it is illogical. Show me a fallacy in my line of reasoning.-You cannot leave out consciousness. The fallacy is that the first cause must be (a) supernatural, and (b) conscious. You quite rightly, in my view, base your evidence on the complexities of life and consciousness, which seem inconceivable without conscious design. But if life and consciousness have to be designed, it is a logical fallacy to say that in God's case they do not have to be designed - they are simply there. You and I reached agreement that the first cause may be energy. But why would eternal energy be conscious of itself? An evolving consciousness through the mindless transformation of energy into matter into energy is just as possible/impossible as a consciousness that has simply existed for ever.