God and evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, March 26, 2017, 19:18 (2797 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Here are your three irreconcilable hypotheses again:
1 Your God’s purpose in creating life was to produce humans.
2 Only God could have designed all the life forms, life styles and natural wonders extant and extinct throughout evolution.
3 God has no human attributes.
DAVID: These may be irreconcilable to you, not to me. They are pillars of my faith.

dhw: Your faith does not remove any of the discrepancies I have pointed out.

The problem is this discussion is that they are your inconsistencies, not mine.

dhw: Fact: humans did not appear until 3.X billion years after life began. Problem with reference to hypothesis 1: why?
You have offered two explanations:
1 God could not do it immediately because he has limitations.
2 God preferred to do it that way, but you can’t explain why.

Why do I have to explain why?

dhw: But if you can’t find an explanation, why reject explanations which even you acknowledge fit the facts as we know them?

Either/or are both reasonable to me. There are n o exact answers as you demand.

dhw: I have always accepted the strength of the case for design, and you know it. My IM is not “spontaneously appearing” because at all times I have emphasized that it may have been invented by your God. But I have challenged your interpretation of your God’s actions, which you yourself cannot explain,

Why should I explain it any further than He is limited or He chose to wait. no one can carry it beyond that.

dhw: Your attack on my intelligence is an unworthy response to my arguments.

I ma not attacking your intelligence which is formidable. You are not trained in biochemistry. I don't think you fully understand the complexity of the controls, which to me demand careful mental planning to achieve. I follow the biochemists in the ID community who make perfect sense to me.

dhw: On Tuesday March 21 you said it was “totally off the reservation” because: “…any power that can produce a fine-tuned universe can then see to the creation of humans without difficulty.”

I'm sure my statement makes perfect sense. Humans were God's primary purpose, a firm point of my theology.

dhw: (You've ignored the dabble in 3.) An authoritative reiteration of your beliefs does not, I’m afraid, provide an explanation for your God’s need to design the fly’s compound eye before he fulfilled his purpose of producing humans.

You've rejected the necessary balance of nature to provide energy for evolution to continue until humans appeared. Chance cannot design that complex eye.

DAVID: Your human reasons for the delay miss the point that a delay is our interpretation and not God's. It may well be His choice of how to do things.

dhw: But you have acknowledged that you can find no “clear explanation” for such a choice.

Why should I have to have a clear explanation when none is available. I'm satisfied with either/or.

dhw: I am offering you clear explanations, and in response you simply reiterate your beliefs. NB I am not asking you to believe anything. I am merely asking you to open your mind to the possibility that one of these alternatives might be true.

They are not clear explanation. They are suppositions that are contrary to my beliefs. I'm not changing any more than you will leave the picket fence.

dhw: I don’t even know if he exists, so I am not “wedded” to anything. But since it is you who insist that he must have a purpose (a human trait),

As I've explained, not necessarily a human trait. He may be all purpose in His own way, not as we humans look at our personal purposes, which is what makes understanding Him so difficult, as show by our debates.

dhw:I am trying to find out what that purpose might be, and to fit it to the history of life as we know it. A totally impersonal pantheistic God is just as believable to me as your observing, thinking, planning, purposeful hide-and-seek God (all of which are “humanized”). But if I am offered an interpretation of life’s history which does not make sense to me, I am not prepared to shut my eyes and say no other explanation is possible. I too am pleading for an open mind.

Your mind is not so open as to accept the premise that the complexity of living cells absolutely requires mental planning to achieve that complexity. The only planning that can exist requires the existence of God. Chance won't work, only design by a designer can work