Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 19, 2017, 19:38 (2834 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Why should God have a 'smidgen' of evil? Your word. Explain please. I'm sure He watches His creation for His own reasons, which cannot be ascertained by simple humans.

dhw; It was your word: Saturday 4 February at 22.44: “I don’t believe God has any smidgen of evil in himself. Evil is the result of what he has created: the physical forces of Earth, the evil in freedom-of-choice imperfect humans. That he allowed the results means He does not care if they happen. He has given us the power to try and solve these problems, and we are doing just that.”

It seems to me that a) if God created everything, he could hardly have created something that he was totally ignorant of,

I'm sure God knew of the problem issues. He gave us the big brain to deal with it.

dhw: The next exchange concerns “balance of nature”, and I will summarize the argument before quoting you: all forms of life need energy. According to you, God had to specially design all life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct in order to keep life going till he could dabble humans.

Not just dabble. It is my bedrock position that God planned for humans. As you know, everything I propose is based on that starting point

dhw: It doesn’t make sense to you that God had to design all these life forms, lifestyles and wonders to keep life going till he could do a dabble, but that is what happened, so God couldn’t do it any other way. The being who created the laws of nature is now limited by the laws of nature. I am offering the hypothesis that maybe your God did NOT set out from the beginning only to produce humans – though he may have dabbled them – but to produce the ever changing spectacle that constitutes the whole history of life on Earth. If your version doesn’t make sense to you, then why not consider an alternative?

As above, because his main purpose was to create humans.

dhw: Nobody would deny that all living forms need energy, but two days ago it did not make sense to you that your God had to design all these life forms before he could dabble humans. If this is a misunderstanding, please explain what it is that does not make sense to you.

DAVID: And you made no note of the obstetrical dilemma article about human big brains where it is obvious God had to play a major role.

dhw:You can call that a dabble if you like. It doesn’t mean that your God had to design frogs’ tongues in order to keep life going before he could dabble humans.

More than dabble. God wanted to make sure they arrived. Remember the title of this discussion. God used a very long, a 3.8 billion year process to produce humans. Frog's tongues are just part of the amazing balance of nature. The process had to be taken from very complex bacterial cells, still here, to the very highly complex big-brained humans, who appeared in big jumps in complex forms and functions. Our research does not tell us how those giant speciation gaps were crossed, but design is so obvious its consideration cannot be avoided, since the gaps require intense advanced planning. All you've come up with is maybe organisms could design their own advances, an ability not yet demonstrated. If we keep unearthing increasing living complexity, but no intrinsic organismal design mechanism , only God is left to consider. That is the main thrust of my argument. Planning mind is required.