Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 29, 2017, 13:18 (2855 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Again your humanizing assumptions that God needs entertaining. How do you know He was bored during His eternity? I don't.
dhw: 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: God may be all purpose and no emotion. You keep adding the latter, by having Him look for entertainment. We don't know if He has "thoughts or feelings like our own".

Once again, we don’t “know” anything. We don’t even “know” if your God exists! And so we speculate. When I asked you why you thought your God specially wanted to create humans, you suggested that he might want a relationship with us. Why is that less “humanizing” than my suggestion that he created the great, changing experiment of life in order to entertain himself?

DAVID: I add things up alternatively to the way you do. After all, I accept God exists, and you play at it.
dhw: 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.
DAVID: You see anomalies where I see logical purpose. And yes, your view in its contorted way fits the story of evolution.

Here again are the two hypotheses:

1) God designed the weaverbird’s nest, taught the blue wasp to eat the crypt gall wasp, guided the monarch butterfly, and created but destroyed 99% of species in order to balance nature, because his purpose from the very beginning was to produce humans with whom he wanted a relationship, although he keeps himself hidden and may not even have any thoughts or feelings in common with the humans with whom he wants a relationship.

2) God designed a mechanism that might enable some organisms to cope with or exploit changing environments in their own individual ways, while others would fail to cope, thereby providing the ever changing spectacle of evolution for his own enjoyment. He may occasionally have dabbled if he got fed up with the status quo or suddenly had a new idea.

Both hypotheses are pure speculation. Please explain why 2) does not offer a logical purpose, and tell us in what way it contorts the history of evolution.