Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 08:58 (2594 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw Of course I am questioning some of your beliefs and your rigid conclusions. And I do not accept the argument that I shouldn’t question them because God’s intentions and nature are unknowable, although you yourself make all the above presumptions.
DAVID: Of course I make assumptions. Your questions goad me and I think things through and reach what I think are logical possibilities. My presumptions answer your questions as far as I can logically.

It is the other way round: I question such assumptions/presumptions as your God’s original purpose being to create humans, that he does not experiment, that he does not contain one smidgen of evil, that he is always in tight control (except when he isn’t in tight control), that organisms are incapable of working out their own lifestyle and natural wonders, and that they were all designed by your God for the purpose of keeping life going until he could dabble humans. As for logical possibilities, see below.

DAVID: Based on historical evidence I look for His purpose only, not His personal thinking or personal desires.

I don’t see how you can separate purpose from personal thinking, and I don’t see why it’s OK to study historical evidence in order to decide whether God exists or not, but not OK to study historical evidence to decide what his intentions and his nature might be. Your argument that they are unknowable applies equally to his existence. That is why we theorize.

DAVID: 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: Precisely. According to you, God had to design the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue and the monarch’s lifestyle etc. in order to keep life going (“balance of nature”) until he could dabble with the pre-human brain. But this only makes sense to you if his powers are limited, and you don’t know if his powers are limited, so you don’t know if it makes sense. What have I misinterpreted?
DAVID: You are conflating two issues. Yes, He had to design complex lifestyles to maintain a balance of nature, only to allow life's evolution to continue.

There is no conflation. Your “had to” theory imposed limitations on him in order to explain why he couldn’t dabble/programme humans in the first place. (“If He is all-powerful then He shouldn't have to use evolutionary processes.” So he’s not all-powerful.) But if he IS all-powerful, he simply chose not to create what he wanted to create until he had designed everything else, and you can’t offer any explanation (that was the theory which originally you said made no sense to you).

dhw: If he “had to” dabble, it could only be because either those wretched autonomous organisms had got it wrong, or his plans weren’t working out (so he got it wrong). Why is this a misinterpretation?
DAVID: It is a question of 'is He limited in any way'? Since I admit I can't know, dabbling is the back-up, nothing more. Your statement overstates it. He may not need any dabbles.

See above. The only alternative you have ever offered to dabbling is pre-programming, i.e. 3.8 billion years ago he preprogrammed the first cells to pass on a brain enlargement programme. But you have no idea why he would have done so if he had the power to fulfil his purpose of creating humans. You know it doesn’t make sense, and yet still you persist with the same scenarios: he planned humans from the start, was able to do it but didn’t (why?), or was not able to do it and was forced to design the weaverbird’s nest and the frog’s tongue until (mysteriously) he WAS able to do it.

DAVID: I fully accept the fact that humans are here without a need for them and against all odds.

Just as you fully accept that all multicellular life is here without a need for it and against all odds, but I accept that humans have a specially enhanced consciousness which we cannot explain.

DAVID: That means purpose for evolution.

The purpose could be the variety of life that we see, with humans perhaps tacked on as an afterthought. Alternatively, as you said yourself, he didn’t know how to create humans (his powers are limited), in which case it is illogical to dismiss the idea that he may have experimented.

DAVID: And you've agreed balance of nature supplied the energy for life to evolve.

Nature supplies the energy, and the balance refers to whichever species can best tap the energy at any given time. In the context of evolutionary history, your “balance of nature” means nothing more than that life goes on – regardless of what form it takes.

DAVID: Evolution was His choice to produce His desired results.

One moment he is limited and has no choice (he must design all the evolutionary varieties until he is capable of enlarging the human brain), and the next he may not be limited and has chosen evolution, but you don’t know why. Utter confusion.