Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 01, 2017, 13:13 (2825 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Therefore, either God could not control them or felt He shouldn't interfere with the process of solar system evolution He started. However, I must be agnostic about His powers. He may well not be able to exert full control.
dhw: So when you say “obviously God could not control this danger”, you actually mean you don’t know whether God could control this danger. And so you don’t know whether God can/does control all the environmental conditions that have influenced evolution.
DAVID: The dangerous asteroids are there. The real issue as above is are they needed for the solar system to work as it evolved? We don't have the answer, which would help us decide about God's powers.

It’s pleasing to see your rapid conversion from the “obvious” limitations of God’s powers to an “agnostic” we don’t know if or to what degree your God’s powers are limited.

dhw: But what apparently you do know is that whether or not he could/did control the environment that influenced evolution, he could and did control every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder because they were all necessary to keep life going until he could fulfil his purpose of producing humans, because apparently you do know precisely what your God was thinking when he created the universe and Planet Earth. If you are agnostic about his powers, then perhaps you should remain agnostic about his intentions – especially since you cannot reconcile your view of his intentions with the history of his creations.
DAVID: If I'm convinced that He wanted to produce humans, it all makes sense to me. That He used evolutionary processes is obvious to me. Which means apparently He had to. He began the universe which then evolved. He created life which then evolved. That is a pattern for God's methods. He chose them because He couldn't do direct creation as the Bible suggests in Genesis. That is a reasonable thought.

A strange idea of “choice” if you the creator of All That Is “have to” do this and can’t do that. Since we both believe that evolution took place, of course your God (if he exists) both designed and used the evolutionary process. However, although your concept of evolutionary dabbling differs from the biblical one of separate creation of species, it is still nothing less than “direct” creation, simply using existing organisms and changing them into something new. According to you, he either preprogrammed or dabbled (directly created) every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution, until at last he could dabble the human brain. This originally did not make sense to you, but now you have hit on the explanation: suddenly, he who until just a few days ago was always in tight control (one of your reasons for rejecting the concept of the autonomous IM has always been that your God would NOT sacrifice his tight control) is forced to design all of this because owing to circumstances which he created but which are beyond his control, he is simply incapable of doing what he set out to do, i.e. dabble the human brain, until the year X. And it was his choice to make himself incapable of doing it any other way.

For further convolutions and contradictions, see “Evolution took a long time”.