Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, March 11, 2017, 12:38 (2596 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw (to Tony): David doesn’t like any attribution of human qualities to his God, but sincyou are clearly willing to see him as loving, perhaps you will understand why I can see another side to him through the not-so-lovable things he has created. The idea of a spectacle does not exclude love, and I can well believe that your God might for instance love humans who worship him, but it also allows for “selfish amusement” and indifference to suffering.
DAVID: Since you don't believe in him, it allows you to make any supposition you wish about his personality, rather than presume, as I do, that his personality is unknowable.

Of course his personality and indeed his existence are unknowable. Currently nobody knows how life originated, how evolutionary innovation happened, what preceded the Big Bang (if that happened), or if there is life after death. That is why we examine the evidence and speculate with our hypotheses. However, you also presume at various times – with authoritative statements – that your God’s purpose was to create humans, he knew exactly how to achieve his purpose, he does not have a smidgen of evil in him, and he does not experiment. These presumptions form the rigid basis of all your evolutionary theories, and they are wide open to question, since you cannot know any of these things.

DAVID: Why must you know why He wanted to create us. Isn't the fact of our creation, enough? If He didn't do it, who would?
dhw: It is you who constantly harp on about all God’s actions being purposeful, and you wrote: “I would also like to know for sure why he produced humans. I've offered several thoughts.” If you would like to know, and you offer your thoughts on the subject, why are you suddenly so coy about the question? Could it be because your thoughts on the subject are so illogical that you’d rather not pursue it?
DAVID: Because I can't fully pursue it. We do not and cannot know God's nature or personality, if we decide in advance, as I have, not to use the Bible.

Once again, nobody can “fully pursue” it, and that is why we look at the only world we know, and try to extrapolate logical conclusions. We would like to know if there is a God or not. You emphasize that you study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and conclude that there is a God, although this is something we cannot “know”. You would also like to know why he produced life/humans, and I would like to know his nature, but suddenly you object if we study cosmology, biology and the history of life on Earth and extrapolate hypotheses (but not conclusions) from our observations.

dhw: You have honestly admitted that it doesn’t make sense to you that your God should have specially designed the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue, the monarch’s lifestyle in order to keep life going till he could dabble with the pre-human brain, and you have admitted that you wander all over the place when trying to find an explanation, so why not just leave it at that?
DAVID: Because I do make sense to me, and you persist in misinterpreting my comments. All you are referencing are parts of a very necessary balance of nature. Yes, some of the developments make no sense on the surface, but they all contribute to balance. That is my true thought.

But you have agreed that the balance of nature means nothing more than the continuation of life. By your own admission, the only sense you have been able to make of the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution is that your God couldn’t do it any other way and had to keep dabbling to make sure it was heading in the right direction. Solar systems came and went, “until the right one appeared”. So why did he have to design all the “wrong” ones (if he did)? As for organisms, either they have the ability to invent their own lifestyles and wonders (but you don’t accept that any of your examples could have been autonomously designed by the organisms), or your God didn’t know what he was doing and had to keep making corrections (but you don’t accept that your God was experimenting)… These are some of the illogicalities which, again as you yourself have admitted, lead you to wander all over the place. But do please tell me what I have misinterpreted.