God and evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 14:08 (2794 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 'Limited' is part of either/or reasoning. We can't know which is correct, and you keep implying a need for exactitude! Really!
dhw: How can I be demanding exactitude when I offer THREE possible and perfectly logical explanations for the “delay”? They are different hypotheses, and I do not insist on any of them. The exactitude is yours, not mine: namely, that God’s purpose from the beginning was to produce humans, and “everything else was related to that goal”.
DAVID: My problem is the word 'delay'. Because humans arrived at the end of evolution, both of us have assumed we must explain it. I have tried to convert the conversation to a different approach in which we recognize it is not a delay at all, just a part of a timeless God's plan. He may not view it as delayed. Therefore, why should we? No explanation is required!

This does not change the fact that you are the one who insists on exactitude, whereas I offer alternatives. However, we do not need to use the word “delay”, which is why I keep putting it in inverted commas. You insist that God’s purpose was to create humans, and “everything else was related to that goal”. I agree that your 2) (below) makes “delay” irrelevant, since it just means God does what he wants to do, but it doesn’t explain why, if humans were his sole purpose, he specially designed millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct before he produced humans! You had two proposals: 1) he couldn’t produce humans at first because of his limitations. 2) He has no limitations, you can’t find a clear explanation, and why should you have to explain it? Either/or. And you keep insisting on your either/or, despite having rejected 1) as “totally off reservation”. Are you now withdrawing your hypothesis that God may be limited, or is it still either/or?

DAVID: Humans were His main purpose. Everything else relates to that goal. Do you have any purposes for Him He might want to achieve?
dhw: If you say his “main” purpose for creating life was humans, he must have had other purposes. Please let us know what you think they are.
DAVID: I don't have any others. "He must have" is a requirement you have invented for Him.

“Must have” refers to your “main”, which means there are other purposes that are secondary. I presume, then, that you mean “only”, not “main”.

dhw: I have already offered you a different main purpose, which fits in perfectly with your theory that he is hidden and is observing us: namely, that he created a spectacle for himself to watch.
DAVID: Humanizing again, and you can't know that.

Nobody can "know" anything. It is a hypothesis. You distorted my objection to your hypothesis as meaning “You want to propose He had no purpose in mind when he started the process? I find that very hard to believe.” So do I, which is why I have suggested a purpose that fits in with all the facts as we know them, and includes your own hypothesis that he is hidden and is observing us. But we cannot “know” that purpose, any more than we can “know” God’s purpose in creating life itself, any more than we can “know” whether God exists. ALL our hypotheses, including your own, are based on interpretations. If an interpretation fits the facts as we know them, I suggest it has a better chance of being true than an interpretation for which you cannot find a clear explanation, as below.

dhw:You agree that ALL of them fit the facts as we know them, but you reject them because they conflict with your suppositions, which you acknowledge do not make sense, i.e. for which you cannot find a clear explanation.
DAVID: I agree your suppositions fit the history. But they do not emphasize the goal of humans that God has. My clearest explanation is that God does not see a 'delay' as we do.

No, my hypotheses (why do you keep calling them suppositions?) do not emphasize what you consider to be God’s purpose, because your interpretation of God’s purpose does not explain why God designed the weaverbird’s nest, the monarch’s lifestyle and the fly’s compound eye before he produced humans. Forget ‘delay’. There is no ‘delay’ if God’s goal was NOT confined to producing humans.