Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 03, 2017, 12:38 (2823 days ago) @ David Turell

I have challenged David’s hypothesis that God wanted humans from the beginning but designed every life form and style and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain, or until pre-humans were able to switch on their 3.8-billion-year-old brain-enlargement programme.

DAVID (on Wednesday March 1): I have always recognized that God might have limits, but He always uses an evolutionary process and keeps as tight control as He can. ...He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: If you now think that your God, who created the universe and life from scratch, can be that limited, why can’t you accept that there is an alternative possibility: namely, that he actually got precisely what he wanted in the way he wanted it, i.e. the ever changing and unpredictable spectacle of life’s history as we know it, maybe with dabbled humans as the most recent and most interesting part of the show?[/i]
DAVID (on Friday 3 March): Your supposed limitations again. We don't know if He has any limits at all. He could be all-powerful per the Bible. (dhw’s bold)

They are not MY supposed limitations! Your God’s limited powers were YOUR explanation for why he couldn’t dabble humans earlier and had to design everything else in order to keep life going! So one moment you suggest that his powers may be limited, and the next moment you suggest that his powers may not be limited, which does away with your attempt to explain the otherwise to you non-sensical anthropocentric hypothesis! My own alternative proposal outlined above does not impose any limitations whatsoever. Your objection to this reverts to:
DAVID: And you are humanizing Him again. I don't know He needed an entertaining show.

I did not say that he needed it but that he wanted it, just as you say he wanted to create humans. It is impossible to discuss your God’s intentions without humanizing him, as you have discovered in your own attempts to explain why he wanted to produce humans. But of course we don’t “know”. We are simply trying to find an explanation that fits the history of life, and your own makes no sense to you unless you impose limitations on your God’s powers.