God and evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 08:30 (2803 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: All our discussions are “trying to make sense of the unknowable”. I simply try to explain the implications of your own attempts. You stated explicitly that God did not “buy time”. If his purpose was to create humans and he was incapable of producing them straight away (one of your two hypotheses), he had to “buy time”. Yes or no?
DAVID: 'Buying time' asks if He is limited and not in control. The length of time of evolution to humans is 3.8 billion years. He may have chosen that length of time. Who knows? For Him time is limitless if we believe the Bible. No answer is possible.

No definitive answer is possible, which is why we come up with our hypotheses and test their likelihood. I have questioned yours, and offered alternatives for testing, so perhaps I can try once more to set it all out for examination.
Your basic tenet is that God planned humans from the very beginning of life. You also claim that only God could have designed all the innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders throughout the history of evolution. My question is why he would have done so if all he wanted to do was to produce humans. You have come up with two hypotheses:

1) he had no choice because his powers were limited and he had to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain or until his 3.8-billion-year brain enlargement programme switched itself on (= “buying time”).
2) His powers were not limited, in which case he chose to delay doing what he really wanted to do, but you don’t know why, and you have agreed that it doesn’t make sense to you.

I have offered you these theistic alternatives:
1) He wanted to create humans (i.e. beings with a consciousness like his own), but didn’t know how to do it so kept experimenting.
2) He wanted and created diversity, and the idea for humans only came later.
3) He deliberately created an autonomous inventive mechanism enabling organisms to do their own designing, but he may also have dabbled.

You have agreed that all of these hypotheses fit in with life’s history, and your original objection was that “some of your proposals take control from God”. 1) limits his knowledge (fits in with your first hypothesis) and preserves your initial purpose; 2) changes your initial purpose but gives him complete control; 3) changes your initial purpose and has him deliberately sacrificing control, though with the option of taking control again if he wants to.

Do you agree that, unlike your second hypothesis, these three make perfect sense? And do you agree that they are just as likely as your hypothesis that your God personally dabbled or 3.8 billion years ago preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sake of producing humans? If not, what is your objection?