The Mind of God (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 19:47 (3571 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Back to the three (possibly four) hypotheses: God preprogrammed the d-b-p, God created the d-b-p separately, the antecedents of the d-b-p used their inventive mechanism to change themselves into d-b-p's, or God gave them half a set of instructions and left the other half to them (= your semi-autonomy). Take your pick.
DAVID: I wish I could take a pick from your proposals. I really can't. That is why the dilemma. I have concluded that God guides evolution. I truly believe that, but how is still beyond me. If there is an IM, and epigenetics suggests that strongly, because of my belief that God controls evolution, organismal self-induced changes are semi-autonomous. That is the only way everything fits in my theory.-I think this answer brings our view of evolution a good deal closer, much as I dislike the term “semi-autonomous”! I understand your conclusion that there is a designer, but if I believed in God, I would find the autonomous inventive mechanism a more satisfactory explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush than the preprogramming or separate creation of every innovation and lifestyle. I would also accept the possibility of dabbling (which could include humans). Since I neither believe nor disbelieve in God (see “Balance”), an autonomous inventive mechanism also fits in with godless evolution (its origin is another subject): indeed, if there is no God, organisms HAVE to invent themselves, even though I don't know of any scientist who has actually put it in those simple terms.
 
dhw: I accept the gap [human intellect being so superior], but not your insistence that the gap did not evolve naturally. 
DAVID: As explained, I work backwards from what we know. Human mental ability is so enormously different from any other animals, that it is an unreasonable advance for ordinary expectations from an evolutionary process.-How can you judge what is "reasonable" or “ordinary” when we have nothing with which to compare our evolution? All we can say is that if life began with single cells, we don't know how or why these evolved into dinosaurs, duck-billed platypuses, or humans. You can start with any complex organism you like and work back to the same non-answer.-DAVID: I am convinced God created life with the purpose of producing conscious humans. I can't take it further. You tell me why He did it if you can. I can't. I'm just glad he did.-If I were a believer, I could easily accept that he wanted to create humans, but I could not accept that evolution's higgledy-piggledy history denotes that it was all planned from the beginning to turn out the way it did. That is why you have your dilemma: you can't conceive of your God not being in total control, and yet you know that life's history does not fit in with your rigidly defined purpose. I'm also glad we're here, though, whether he did it or not.