Purpose and design (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained @, U.S.A., Sunday, April 23, 2017, 00:27 (2522 days ago) @ dhw


TONY: If something has served its purpose and is no longer needed, why keep it? If you have to destroy it, why not use the mechanisms already in place, like bacteria to create a disease or a meteorite? Yes, it does reveal his nature. He obeys his own laws. He is not hesitant about destroying that which is no longer needed. He may even be sentimental about it, but does not let the sentimentality stop him from doing what must be done.

DHW If he wants animals (including ourselves) to help and love one another as well as to hunt one another and be maimed or killed by his viruses and natural disasters, so be it. (I’ll come to purpose in a moment.)

Want and purpose are not the same, as you acknowledge. It is one thing to say that bacteria, disease, or even maiming and killing are part of his purpose, but quite a different one to say he wants it.

TONY: I have always acknowledged that God possessed qualities like jealousy, anger, regret, etc.

DHW And so there is no reason why one should not hypothesize that God’s purpose in creating this great spectacle of endlessly changing life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders – with humans especially fertile in the production of new twists and turns – was to provide a rich entertainment for himself. Dinosaurs were no longer “needed” because he got fed up with them, so whoosh! plunk! splat! along came Chicxulub. You seem to agree that your God may have given organisms the ability to design their own innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders within given constraints, which would add to the interest of the show. So although I do not expect you to support this interpretation of life’s history, can you fault its logic?

Except that entertainment is and empty purpose, and nothing I see in all of creation points to such wastefulness being an attribute of God.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.


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