Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 21, 2017, 11:26 (2832 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: According to you, he created the problem issues, and yet according to you he does not have a “smidgen of evil” in him. Also according to you, he doesn’t care what suffering his diseases and natural disasters cause. Let us for a moment forget the beauty of the world (for which due credit must of course be given), and tell me how you would describe a being who deliberately created the causes of appalling suffering but didn’t care?
DAVID: You've twisted my concept again. I have suggested He had to accept the problems and could not avoid them. Please review my comments.

No twisting. Your own statements raise two issues. Firstly, you claim that your God was forced (presumably by the laws of Nature which he had created, since he created everything) to create diseases and natural disasters in order to produce humans. And now he watches to see if humans can solve the problems that he couldn’t solve! None of that makes sense. Secondly, on Saturday 4 February at 22.44 you wrote: “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.” (My bold) According to you, he didn’t “allow” the results but he had no choice – and he doesn’t care. Quite apart from the fact that not caring is every bit as “humanizing” as caring, I would like to know what you would call a being who inflicts suffering and doesn’t care.

DAVID: God used a very long, a 3.8 billion year process to produce humans.
Dhw: He used a very long, 3.8 billion year process to produce millions of species, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct, and the argument that he had to do so in order to produce humans makes no sense to you, but it is your bedrock position that this nonsensical scenario is true.
DAVID: Again twisting. I have said I don't understand why He used such a long evolutionary period of time. It appears He either wanted to or had to. That is the way I make sense of it, as I have said before.

Feb. 17 at 18.54 (under “particles and connections”): dhw: ….you insist that your God, who is always in tight control, geared everything right from the beginning to the production of humans, which leads you to have him designing nests and flight paths and parasites and frogs' tongues and fishy camouflage etc. in order to keep life going before he can dabble with the brains of humans - and his ability to dabble makes even you wonder why he couldn't have produced us more directly. It just doesn't make sense.
DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans. He used an evolutionary process of living organisms, after using an evolutionary process to create the universe and a very special Earth.

It doesn’t make sense to you, but that’s what happened, so he either wanted or had to do it in a way that makes no sense to you. You refuse to consider the possibility that in devising the evolutionary process he might have had perfectly understandable intentions different from those that you impose on him.

DAVID: I don't accept your style of description of balance of nature. I view it as absolutely necessary. The frog tongue is specialized to help him live in his balance of nature.

Yes, the frog’s tongue, just like every other lifestyle and natural wonder, is specialized to enable him to survive, and each organism has its own “balance” within its own niche, and 99% have died out because what you call the “balance of nature” is whatever affects individual organisms and has nothing whatsoever to do with your God designing every lifestyle and wonder in order to keep life going until humans could arrive.

dhw: An “intrinsic organismal design mechanism” (previously known as an autonomous inventive mechanism) does not exclude God, since we are still left with the origin of the mechanism itself. You constantly shift the subject from what you yourself consider to be the non-sense of your 100% preprogramming/dabbling hypothesis to the existence of God.
DAVID: It is obvious you cannot get rid of God in your own thinking with your own God-lite IM proposal. Chance or design (not God-lite) is all there can be.

Of course I can’t get rid of God. I am an agnostic. I can neither believe nor disbelieve. But it is not God-lite to disagree with your personal reading of your God’s mind, especially when that reading results in a scenario which does not make sense even to you and can only be explained by your claim that he must have wanted or been forced to do it your way. Maybe your way is NOT the correct reading of his mind.