Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 06, 2017, 15:27 (2602 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: For the sake of argument, I am accepting the existence of your God. I will also accept that humans are special, in view of their enhanced consciousness. Once more: what I am disputing is your claim that he planned humans right from the start and geared the whole of evolution to producing them. I have offered alternatives to your preprogramming and dabbling scenario: 1) He wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but didn’t know how to do it, and so kept experimenting (which fits in perfectly with your new belief that your God may be limited in his powers. 2) He wanted to produce an ever-changing spectacle, and humans came into his mind as an afterthought. Both these scenarios explain the higgledy-piggledy nature of life’s history. Why, then, is it so important to you that your God should have planned humans right from the start, when this hypothesis leads to so much confusion, as below?

DAVID: ...why dangerous asteroids? He must have had to include them as He evolved the universe. Therefore limited to some degree.

dhw: “Must have” means he is limited. Then you go on to say: “I don't know that God's limitations, if any, required that He use an evolutionary process.” Why “if any” if he must have had to use asteroids? If he is forced by his own laws of nature to use asteroids, what else might he have been forced to do?

Note Tony's comment. God's universe must have required asteroids, and then in my sense He is limited.

> DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans. (Followed later by the explanation:) He may simply could not do it any other way and is not as all powerful as the Bible proposes.

dhw: Limitations are your explanation for why he couldn’t produce us more directly and therefore had to design every other life form etc. If you use limitations as your explanation for his having to create everything else, but then you argue that he may not be limited, you are once more confronted with the non-sense of your scenario! That is why I keep asking why it is so important to you to believe humans were planned from the very beginning.

Limitations are only one possibility, not the only explanation available as I have indicated. Why can't I look at it in several ways, all of which are logical approaches to the problem. Perhaps evolutionary change was preferred. I'm not wedded to any of the possibilities of explaining His methods. Humans had to be planned from the beginning. They are here against all odds, not required by nature's stresses; nothing more is required to recognize the reason I accept the premise.