Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 21:12 (2853 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Yes, both fit the history. #2 is very humanizing approach with its central idea that God wants entertainment and/or enjoyment. I am offering the contention that God wanted to produce humans without presupposing His motives, which we cannot know. The only possibility I know for motive is a relationship.
Dhw: You asked me what motive your God might have for sacrificing control, and I gave you an answer: his enjoyment.
DAVID: In human psychology parlance seeking entertainment is a form of 'pass timing' a way of filling time with no purpose. I see purpose in God's activities. You don't.

Enjoyment and the relief of boredom are a purpose in themselves. You are the one who claims to be looking for purpose, but purpose doesn’t stop at the production of something: one should ask what is the purpose of the product. I theorized that your God produced an autonomous mechanism, you asked why he would sacrifice control, and I theorized that he could enjoy the show. (You think enjoyment is "humanizing".) Now it’s my turn. You theorize that he controlled the mechanism (by preprogramming or dabbling) so that he could have a relationship with humans. So why do you think your God wants a relationship with humans?

dhw: The central idea of #1 is to fit the vast variety of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and, in 99% of cases, extinct to a single motive (although you say we cannot know your God’s motives): the production of humans.
DAVID: With their unexplainable ability of using consciousness or abstract thought.

According to you, God dabbled in order to produce our enhanced consciousness, so why did he need to design the weaverbird’s nest, the monarch’s migratory lifestyle, the cuttlefish’s camouflage and the duckbilled platypus if he could dabble humans anyway?

DAVID: Again your total confusion over the necessary balance of nature which interlocks various micro-niches so everyone has an energy supply. Humans and their consciousness ability totally unnecessary! Bacteria had no need to evolve to multicellular to arrange the road to us. You have it entirely backwards.

“Everyone” does not have an energy supply. 99% of species went extinct. You have already agreed that the balance of nature merely means that life goes on in whatever form: what survives survives, and what doesn’t survive doesn’t survive. And so there will still be a “balance of nature” even if bacteria are the only creatures left on earth. As for necessity, NO multicellular creatures were “necessary”. So why did your God create the “unnecessary” mosquito, duckbilled platypus, tsetse fly, and the “unnecessary” mammoth, triceratops, tyrannosaurus….plus all the other millions of species and lifestyles and wonders extant and extinct? They aren’t/weren’t even “necessary” for the production of humans, since you think your God had to do a special dabble.

Xxxx

David’s comment (under "Balance of nature"): Once again we see the scientific approach to how beneficial a proper balance is to areas of the Earth. If you think this is unimportant, ask yourself why are these efforts being tried in this instance and in New Zealand where there are removing foreign feral species, brought there in a recognized mistaken way.

Once again the “balance” you are talking about here is restricted to what humans consider to be the most beneficial combinations of plant and animal life. Of course this is important to areas of the Earth. Now tell me what it has to do with your God deliberately designing and then destroying millions of species, lifestyles and natural wonders, simply in order to produce humans. In the context of evolutionary history, you have already agreed that all you mean by it is that life goes on.