Divine purposes and methods (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 01, 2019, 18:42 (2151 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm simply logically noting that diversity in life provides food for evolution to continue. You question 'why so much diversity' as if you think less would do. You question what God did. I don't do that. I simply use what is present and interpret a reasonable explanation.

dhw: If God exists, whatever he did resulted in life’s history as we know it. That is logical. It is also logical to argue that diversity in life provides diverse foods for diverse life forms. I don’t question what he did, but your interpretation of what he did and why he did it, and it is not logical to insist that although he only had ONE purpose (H. sapiens), and could have chosen any way he liked to fulfil that one purpose, he chose to spend 3.5+ billion years specially designing millions of other life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct that provided food for one another and had nothing to do with H. sapiens.

We are discussing God's role in evolution. Once again you are in God's mind and telling us/Him what He did is illogical. He chose to evolve over time. Humans are the current endpoint. Of course they are God's goal, and probably the final step. I've explained the need for food, nothing more. You agree to it, so what is your problem with God's choices?

DAVID: Why do I have to explain God's choices of method? He made the choice, I didn't.

dhw; Because there are lots of different possible explanations of your God’s purposes and methods. I am asking you to explain YOUR choice out of all those possible explanations, and you can’t.

I just did above.

dhw: There is no disagreement that we are the current advanced result of evolution, just as dinosaurs in their day were the current advanced result. However, that does not mean that humans were the goal of the evolutionary process from the very beginning, as you have always maintained, or that your God specially designed dinosaurs, and did so merely in order to provide food until he could specially design humans. See below for alternatives.

We are the only result with consciousness which can think of God. That is a major part of the explanation of humans as the primary goal.

DAVID: […] we must accept God chose a method and used it. We must accept that from your agnostic viewpoint, God is illogical, because He didn't do it the way you think He should have done it, all from your humanistic logic about Him.

dhw: Of course I accept that if your God exists, he chose a method and used it, and I have no doubt that he would have chosen a perfectly logical way to implement his purpose. I am questioning your logic, not his – namely the dislocation between your insistence that he had only one purpose from the very beginning (us), had full control and could choose any method he liked of producing us, but spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing all the branches of the evolutionary bush. Once more, here some theistic alternatives which are no more humanizing than your own but which even you agree are logical: maybe he wanted the diversity of the bush for its own sake and not merely as food to keep life going until he could design us; maybe he wanted to create a self-aware thinking being but didn’t know how to make it; maybe he didn’t think of humans until later in the process. But these alternatives require the exclusion of one or other of your dislocated hypotheses (single purpose, full control, special design of every non-human organism for 3.5+ billion years), and so you reject them.

Note the bold. It shows no logic, but directly questions God's choices. Of course I reject your pipe dreams about God' possible thoughts. As I've already stated, you can invent God any way you wish and give Him any type of woolly thinking you can invent. Since God made choices, accept them. The only God invention we see with consciousness is humans, a huge step beyond anything else around in the diversity. If God loved diversity, humans are a dangerous invention. We are reducing diversity!

I'm not dislocated. You are floating around in mid-air supposing various God thoughts with no basis in fact. Evolution is not a play so you can invent dialogue as the playwright you are. God is not an actor. He created the play line plot you don't like.