Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 07, 2017, 09:09 (2819 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: As for His power, I think logically you to are barking up the wrong tree. If you consider the Universe as a framework, there is a very real possibility that exerting his full power in the manner you suggest would break the universe. Imagine building a ship in a bottle. Once you pass a certain point, forcing objects around inside is more likely to break everything, even if you have the raw strength to do so.

I don’t know what tree you think I’m barking up! Let me fill you in on the discussion so far. David believes his God created the universe and life for the purpose of producing humans, and did it by designing a vast variety of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain (or until the time came for his 3.8-billion-year-old computer software encompassing the whole of life’s history to switch on its brain-enlargement programme). David has suggested that perhaps God’s powers are limited, and he HAD to do it this way, just as he HAD to produce asteroids. I don’t think either of us would dispute that if he is powerful enough to create the universe, he is also powerful enough to destroy it, but the disagreement between us is over his intentions and his means of fulfilling his intentions. See the rest of the discussion 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?
DAVID: Note Tony's comment. God's universe must have required asteroids, and then in my sense He is limited.

IF he is limited in one context, he may be limited in others. NB I am not saying he is. That is your explanation for why he couldn’t produce humans until he’d produced carnivorous plants, frogs’ tongues and the weaverbird’s nest.

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.
DAVID: 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.

You have ONLY offered preprogramming and/or dabbling as his methods, and you have ONLY offered the one purpose: to produce humans. You are asking the question I keep asking you: why can’t you look at it in several ways, all of which are logical answers to the problem of why the history of life is one long sequence of hugely varied life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct. Maybe humans were not planned from the beginning. Maybe your God wanted to create an ever-changing spectacle, and hit on the idea of an enhanced consciousness as the spectacle developed. Or maybe your God wanted to create an enhanced consciousness like his own but didn’t know how to do it and had to experiment. Tony clearly has other “maybes” in mind.

DAVID: 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.

ALL life is here against all odds, and the survival of bacteria shows that NO multicellular forms of life were required by nature’s stresses. You continue to wander around all over the place (your words, not mine) because you resolutely refuse to look at the problem in any way other than humans being planned from the beginning, and everything else being a means to that end. And you still won’t tell me why this belief is so important to you that you are unable to consider any alternative explanations of life's history.