Divine purposes and methods (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, January 10, 2019, 13:45 (2142 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If your God exists, we can only ask ourselves why he might have done something. The food supply argument has nothing to do with the evolution of humans, as you have admitted, and in any case you seem to think that H. sapiens didn't evolve, as such, but was specially designed. Your human reasoning tells you that since we are the latest and most intelligent species of all, God must have wanted us from the beginning. That want is no less “human” than suggesting we were the last inventions he thought of, or he did want some sort of thinking being, but didn’t know how to get it.

DAVID: You are making human guesses about God again in the bold!

And so are you in the sentence preceding your bold. We can only make human guesses, and there is no reason to suppose that your guess, which leads to what you agree is a logical impasse, is more accurate than any of the logical alternatives I propose. So please stop pretending that your guesses are not just as human as mine.

DAVID: […] Your point is logical: if all powerful, why did He wait so long? Logical answers: either it was His choice or He had to do it that way, for reasons we do not understand, but might one day with enough research into the problems evolution present.

dhw: Different logical, theistic answers: maybe he did NOT start out with the purpose of creating H. sapiens; maybe he did have that purpose but didn’t know how to achieve it; maybe he started out with the purpose of creating an ever changing bush of life (as history shows) by means of an autonomous mechanism which would respond to ever changing conditions, although he dabbled when he wanted to. None of these explanations are more “humanizing” than the claim that he “wanted” humans from the start but chose to spend 3.5+ billion years designing other things, and all of these explanations remove the logical impasse which your human reasoning has created but which you insist represents a correct reading of your God’s mind.

DAVID: Again pins and angels. My reasoning is from facts.

We are looking at the same facts: Life's history has produced a vast diversity of forms extant and extinct; humans, with their exceptional intelligence, are the last so far. All the above interpretations fit in logically and comprehensibly with these facts. Your own reasoning leads you to a conclusion that you cannot understand. So maybe your conclusion is less likely to be true than any of the above.

DAVID: I read God's mind logically, because I don't embellish with endless suppositions of what He might have thought along the way of conducting evolution.

Mind reading entails supposing what someone is thinking, and your reading of your God’s mind - let's spell it out once more - is that his sole purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, but for 3.5+ billion years he specially designed lots and lots of other life forms so that they could eat one another, and you can’t understand why he chose that method of specially designing H. sapiens. But you call it logical.