God and evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, March 27, 2017, 12:04 (2796 days ago) @ David Turell

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.
DAVID: Why do I have to explain why?

Nobody has to explain anything. I just thought you and I were interested in trying to make sense of the world we live in.

dhw: But if you can’t find an explanation, why reject explanations which even you acknowledge fit the facts as we know them?
DAVID: Either/or are both reasonable to me. There are no exact answers as you demand.

We both know that there are no exact answers -only speculations and hypotheses, including the God theory. I agree that both hypotheses – an all-powerful versus a limited God – are reasonable. That is why I offered hypothesis 1, but on Tuesday March 21 you rejected it because: “...any power that can produce a fine-tuned universe can then see to the creation of humans without difficulty.” And yet you say the inconsistencies are mine, not yours.

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

Your statement does make perfect sense. But it invalidates your hypothesis that perhaps God did not fulfil his primary purpose for 3.X billion years because he was limited, and that leaves you with no explanation. Why do you say both statements are “reasonable” if you think one is “totally off the reservation”?

DAVID: I follow the biochemists in the ID community who make perfect sense to me.

Once again: I accept the case for design. It is a major reason why I cannot embrace atheism. (I have explained many times why I cannot embrace theism either.) But that is not the subject of this thread, which is “God and evolution”, i.e. how and why your God might have produced life’s history as we know it. That is why all the alternatives I have offered you are theistic.

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

They are not suppositions but alternative possible explanations. Your God could not produce humans straight away (= limitations), OR he didn’t think of humans till later, OR he designed evolution to follow its own paths, but did an occasional dabble which may have included humans. What is not clear? You even agree that all of them fit life’s history! The only supposition we have been confronted with is your insistence that your God’s evolutionary purpose was to produce humans. However, there are interesting changes taking place in your vocabulary. Earlier it became “a” goal instead of “the” goal, and in this post you refer to your God’s “primary” purpose. Perhaps you would elaborate on what you think may have been his other goals/purposes.