Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 11, 2017, 22:50 (2595 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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.

I know we are discussing possibilities, but some of what you question are things I believe as I worked through my research from my early agnostic position. I know I can't convince you of my conclusions, some of which are naturally very rigid.

dhw: 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.

I never object to covering studies as you list. It is obvious our conclusions differ as we each emphasize different facts.

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.

dhw: 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.

I have always said pre-planning and/or dabbling. Those are alternatives, because I do not know if He has any limitations, which He may have.

dhw: 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 I've pointed out, He may have designed a process at the beginning of the Big Bang to create many varieties of universes, and definitely stepped in to start life when the correct one appeared with the correct Earth. View it as a process He set up, not laboriously designing each solar system. The system did it for Him.

dhw;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.

Totally misinterpreted: see above. Pre-planning and dabbling have always been alternative possibilities, since I am not sure how all-powerful He is. Remember I think He used evolutionary processes at all levels; universe forming, solar system forming, Earth forming, life forming, evolution of humans. All we see is evolutionary processes at each step. Yes?