Cosmology: Earth in goldylocks zone; dangerous (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 01, 2017, 12:30 (2368 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Please take my word for it. I view your hypothesis as descriptive of the history we know. I explain history as I see it from god's viewpoint. Yours is a viewpoint from non-acceptance of God.

dhw: I don’t know what word you expect me to take. We agree on the history, and we both offer a THEISTIC explanation of that history. The theistic viewpoint I offer is that of a God creating life as an ever-changing spectacle, part of which is human behaviour. Your viewpoint is that God created the ever-changing spectacle in order to produce humans who would think about him and have a relationship with him. I propose a free-for-all set in motion by God’s design, and you propose total control. I’m afraid that calling my hypothesis “descriptive” does not make it any less of an explanation of history from God’s viewpoint than your own.

DAVID: Yes, the bush of life offers a spectacle for us in its marvelous diversity. That doesn't mean God has to view it that way. All I accept is God created it. But it was on the way to a greater creation in the human brain. You see God as having enjoyment. I see Him as purposeful, while 'enjoyment' is an unknown proposition. You take what we see beyond an way of proving your suppositions. All I know is what I see He created and presume that was His purpose.

Neither of us can prove any of our hypotheses (there are no suppositions, except in your case the existence of God.) You keep talking about purpose. My theistic hypothesis, like yours, is that he purposely created what he created (in mine, he purposely created a free-for-all, with the option of dabbling). But the question is the purpose of his creating what he created! Enjoyment is a purpose, but the only purpose you have offered us for the whole vast bush of life extant and extinct is the production of the human brain so that we can think about God and have a relationship with him. Hardly a purpose for specially designing the eight-stage whale, the weaverbird’s nest, the toxin-swallowing snake, or the skull-shrinking shrew.

DAVID: The whole bush of life is what is important. Why not accept that God is an inventor?
dhw: If God exists, of course he is an inventor. And I agree that the whole bush of life is important, and not just the brain of Homo sapiens. And I suggest that a God who invents a mechanism that can produce the whole bush of life is no less inventive than a God who invents each and every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder individually, either through a 3.8-billion-year computer programme or by means of personal dabbling.
DAVID: God has to exist. What we see is not created by chance mechanisms.

If I suggest that you God may have invented a mechanism to produce the whole bush of life, I am not suggesting that the bush of life was created by a chance mechanism!