Divine purposes and methods (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, January 04, 2019, 16:08 (2148 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Ask God. The point is I don't know why evolution looks like it does. I simply accept God's choice of method and see the need for a food supply, as you also do.

dhw: Unfortunately, neither of us can ask God (if he exists), which is why we can only speculate. All life requires food, and that is irrelevant to the question I asked. I have offered you alternative answers to the question you can’t answer (forms of experimentation), which in the past you have agreed are logical.

Yes logical, which does not require acceptance as the 'best' explanations. A concept of God who decides His actions in required. Mine is not yours.

DAVID: Humans are here. God wanting them to appear explains it.

dhw: Fine. Whales, elephants, mosquitoes and the duckbilled platypus are also here, and dinosaurs were here. God wanting them to appear explains it. The ever changing bush of comings and goings also appeared. God wanting it to appear explains it. So once more: why do you find it illogical to suggest that your God WANTED the variety provided by the ever changing bush of comings and goings that characterizes life’s history?

I know the history. The explanation is ecosystems for food supply. Nothing more. That is obvious. Why invent extra possibilities?

dhw: How can conscious be “vastly different” from consciousness? You agree that your dog is conscious/has consciousness, but has nothing like your own degree of it or of your self-awareness.

DAVID: And Adler wrote 'The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes". You are still minimizing the difference.

dhw: There is no difference between having consciousness and being conscious, and I agree that the difference between human consciousness and animal consciousness is vast. How does that minimize the difference?

All life easily exists while conscious, except humans who have extraordinary consciousness, and never needed it to live. We are special. Ask yourself why?

DAVID: Your dreamy suppositions do explain the history, but do not show a driving purpose, and I view God as being very purposeful. I don't have to explain the gap which you constantly demand. I accept the method and but have tried to explain it as it presents itself historically. My reasoning is perfectly logical based on a purposeful God.

dhw: I have never at any time seen your God as being anything but purposeful or very purposeful. Of course he had a purpose if he deliberately created life. Even if his one and only purpose was to create a being who – in your words – would think about him and have a relationship with him – you can’t explain why he chose to spend 3.5+ billion years creating millions of other unconnected organisms, lifestyles etc,

I can't explain God's reasoning, so why shouldn't I simply accept history as as I see it and find the one logical explanation of ecosystems for food, which life has to have to continue to evolve over time. You are the struggling one. Just accept the history with the one reason I've given. You constantly try to humanize God to fit your own human puzzlement. He is not human!

dhw: but you agree that this gap is closed if he had to experiment in order to achieve his purpose (i.e. didn’t know how to do it) or if humans came as a late afterthought as he experimented to see what he could come up with through all these different life forms. You keep harping on about purpose, wrongly claim that my version of your God is not purposeful, and you offer the extremely human purpose mentioned above, but if I offer an alternative purpose (relief of his isolation), you say I’m humanizing him, and when I suggest he wanted to create the bush (= purpose) you say I “have humanistically invented a ‘want’ for Him to follow”, though you say that God wanting humans to appear explains their appearance. Do you not detect a hint here of double standards?

Can't you see how you are attempting in this paragraph of suppositions how you are trying to impose human reasoning on Him? Humans are the current endpoint, but you are not sure God wanted them? Stick to what we know. Based on the requirements for survival (Darwin) there is no need for us. Evolution moves from fairly simple to very complex not based on survival but to create more and more complex forms ending in primates. That is God pushing the process. You admit advancing beyond bacteria was not required. Why did it happen if not God in action? Humans are here through God's work, and He used evolution to do it. Yes, He wanted us. The doppelganger here is your human concept of God beyond any reasonable standard.