Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 00:34 (2812 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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),

He may well be in tight control

dhw: 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.

It may not require dabbling.

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

dhw: I don’t see how you can separate purpose from personal thinking,

One can certainly have pure purpose as the only thought without some type of personal gratification.

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.

dhw: 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

Explanation as above. Evolution can be His choice and He guides it. Of course evolution implies He might be limited , but if it is His method of choice and He guides it, then he is not limited. I'm simply describing the various possibilities. It is why I introduced dabbling vs. pre-planning.

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.

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

dhw: 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.

And I've noted above, He may well have no limits.

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

dhw: 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.

Will you eve accept the point that the balance supplies the necessary energy for life to continue, and is required?

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

dhw: 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.

I'm not confused. I just don't fully accept the idea the He is all-powerful as in the Bible. My evidence is all of the evolutionary processes we see. But He may well be all-powerful if guided evolution is His method of choice. Quite clear to me, and should be clear to you.