Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 16, 2017, 09:13 (2837 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your approach is much too humanizing for me. He didn't feel the need to create something interesting. He simply had a specific goal, the creation of humans.
dhw: Once more you state your beliefs with authority, as if you had access to your God’s thoughts. He only wanted to create humans and…what? He had no reason for doing so? (A few days ago, he wanted a relationship with us, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside in view of communication problems with a hidden being who has nothing in common with us.) According to you, your God is all-purposeful, so why are you so unwilling to accept that if he created us, set us problems, and is watching our efforts to handle them, he might just possibly have created us in order to set us problems in order to watch us handling them?
DAVID: I'm sure He is definitely interested in following what we do. And I've said He is a tough love God. You've just defined Him as I do. He's left us with problems to work out, I think primarily because He could not avoid them in creation. I've warned you. Don't accept what religions say about Him.

I really don’t think you need to warn an agnostic against accepting what religions say about your God. As one hypothesis concerning God’s purpose, I have proposed that he created life as a show or spectacle for himself to enjoy watching. You have vehemently opposed this hypothesis. However, you are quite sure that he created the whole of life, that he remains hidden, but is definitely interested in following what we do. Perhaps you dislike the word “enjoy”, but I can’t see that as being more humanizing than “watch with interest”. And if he is watching, I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t call what he is watching a show or spectacle. So please explain to me why it is unreasonable to suppose that if your all-purposeful God created the whole of life, including humans, and is definitely watching with interest, it may have been his purpose to create something that he could watch (a spectacle) with interest (enjoyment).