Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 22:56 (2831 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 23:19

dhw: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: I don't know that He doesn't care. I don't remember ever saying that.

dhw: I gave you the quote: 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.” (My bold) It’s difficult to hold a discussion if you dissociate yourself from your own statements.

Thank you for finding the statement. What I meant is that it is definitely possible that He could not control the side effects of how He had to create the Earth. That stands to reason that if his purpose is to create humans and the side effects have to appear. I mean He doesn't care if the side effects happen, but He cares to produce humans. Now it happens that earthquakes kill individual people, but doesn't end the species. This fits Adler's point that God may not be personal or care about individuals. We don't know if God loves us! I'm really pleased you jumped on my statement so tangentially. I had to rethink my positions. You've never understood my basic primacies that I do not come from a position that God loves us. I stay away from religion. Your own concepts of a possible God seem to come from your childhood training. Can you tell me your version of how we should think about God or do you have a version?

DAVID: He might have other purposes. We don't see any obvious ones, but remember I start from the conclusion He wanted humans, and that is history.

dhw: Perhaps one should not start with a conclusion, especially when the conclusion leads to a scenario which even you agree makes non-sense of the whole higgledy-piggledy process. God wanting humans is not history. The fact that humans arrived, that the duckbilled platypus arrived, and that 99% of species arrived and departed is history. God’s intentions (if he exists) are speculation.

I start with another first conclusion. Humans are here against all odds.

DAVID: God is only developing an energy-supplying balance of nature to allow for billions of years of evolution. So simple to see.

dhw: Life will always require energy. THAT is simple to see. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the claim that your God had to design every evolutionary twiddly bit in order to keep life going until he could dabble with the pre-human brain or until his 3.X-billion-year-old human brain programme could switch itself on.

Every oddity makes the necessary battle of nature.

DAVID: Your posture on the fence requires you to use God-lite constantly. Obvious. There is only chance or design; the latter requires a designer! I view you as stuck in limbo.

dhw: I know you love your new coinage “God-lite”, but God creating a mechanism that would provide an ever changing spectacle of life forms (while allowing him to dabble) is not “God-lite”. It merely offers an alternative to your own avowedly non-sensical interpretation of your God’s evolutionary intentions and methods, and I’m afraid my being stuck in limbo does not endow your scenario with the sense that is so patently missing.

You are simple offering God in a slightly different form. Only chance or design are possible.