Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 28, 2017, 12:35 (2856 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:I have already answered your question many times, in my hypothetical theistic explanation of the higgledy-piggledy history of life’s comings and goings. God would give up that total control because he wanted to. Why? Perhaps because the creation of life was an experiment, a show, an entertainment, a means of relieving eternal boredom. Do you enjoy shows that are utterly predictable?
DAVID: Again your humanizing assumptions that God needs entertaining. How do you know He was bored during His eternity? I don't.

I don’t “know” anything. You asked me why he would be willing to sacrifice control, and I have offered you a hypothetical explanation. How can one possibly attribute motivation without humanizing? My hypothesis is no more “humanizing” (and in my view is considerably more logical) than yours that he preprogrammed or dabbled every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to balance life in order to produce humans, because they matter to him and he wants to have a relationship with them although he chooses to remain hidden. (And the relationship becomes even more bizarre if he doesn't even have any thoughts or feelings like our own!)

DAVID: More convincing only to you. Humans are here against all odds.

So is the duckbilled platypus, And that doesn’t de-“humanize” or explain the logic of your hypothesis.

dhw: But I’m pleased to see that although autonomous intelligent inventive mechanisms are “not in your considerations, ever!” unless we call them “God”, you agree that they are possible.
DAVID: Autonomous IM's with follow up dabbles, as you've agreed, are fine.

From ”not in my considerations, ever!” to “fine” is progress indeed. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll agree that the weaverbird, the parasitic wasps, the monarch, the cuttlefish and even bacteria might just possibly have done some self-organizing rather than relying on God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal intervention.

dhw:Since there is no more evidence for your hypotheses than mine, I can only assume you refuse to consider mine because you happen to know what matters to God and I don’t!

DAVID: I add things up alternatively to the way you do. After all, I accept God exists, and you play at it.

No question that we add things up differently. I don’t know why you think your acceptance of God’s existence somehow blots out all the anomalies in your two hypotheses. Even you have admitted that mine cannot be faulted in the way it fits the history of evolution.