Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 23, 2017, 11:31 (2830 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.”
DAVID: 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 are constantly rethinking your positions, which is not a bad thing to do. You have now moved from a God who created everything and has always been in tight control, to a God who may not be in control at all but is at the mercy of his own laws. At times he has been in control of the environment, and at others he has not. Once upon a time he wanted a relationship with us, but since he remains hidden and may not have anything in common with us, he now created us in order to watch us solve problems. He apparently does not have a “smidgen of evil” in him, and yet maybe he doesn’t care if individuals suffer, so long as the species goes on. (What would you call a being who causes untold suffering to individuals but doesn’t care?) He watches with interest, but that doesn’t mean he created us in order to watch us with interest.
Of course we don’t know if God cares or not, and we hardly need Adler to tell us that.

DAVID: 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?

I have always understood the dilemma you have mentioned several times: that we do not know if God is “personal” and loving, but all the same you approach him as if he is. And I can quite understand that you will be more comfortable shifting the focus from your own confusion to mine. There is no “should think” for me. I don’t know if God exists, but if he does, I can well imagine him merely watching the spectacle for his own entertainment. On the other hand, it would be nice to imagine him compensating those who have suffered – especially at his hands – by welcoming them to eternal bliss. On the third hand, I can’t imagine anything eternal being blissful. Maybe eternal and dreamless sleep is the best one can hope for – in which case we shall never know if he exists or not. I have never tried to hide my own ambivalent feelings about the existence and nature of God. Our discussions have always centred on the inconsistencies and contradictions in your own concepts. (I don’t mean that unkindly. I don’t think it’s possible to hold firm beliefs in this context without blinding oneself to the obvious objections – hence the ultimate recourse to faith.)

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

So is every other form of life. That is what we are trying to explain.

DAVID: Every oddity makes the necessary battle of nature.

Most perish, and that does not give any support to the theory that every oddity was specially created by your God in order to keep life going till he could dabble with pre-human brains or pre-humans could switch on his brain-enlargement programme.

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

I am pointing out that there is a theistic explanation of the evolutionary process that dispenses with all the factors that make no sense even to you.