Divine purposes and methods (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, January 14, 2019, 13:04 (2138 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Human are here, but they are not His current goal? What fact are you looking for?

dhw: Firstly, you keep maintaining that humans were his goal from the very beginning (not just his “current” goal). The duckbilled platypus is also here. Does that mean it’s also his current goal? Secondly, you don’t know why he chose to spend 3.5+ billion years specially designing other unrelated life forms extant and extinct, but…

DAVID: Haven't you noticed the latest arrival in the fossil record in Homo sapiens. We are the most advanced and the most complex. The platypus is certainly somewhat complex but anticeded us and is much less complex.

I have said repeatedly that we are the latest and most advanced species to appear, but the fact that we “are here” does not mean we were your God’s purpose from the very beginning, and that – yet again – is the sticking point: if we were his purpose from the very beginning, and he is in total control, why did he spend 3.5+ billion years creating dinosaurs, eight stages of whale, camouflaged cuttlefish and the duckbilled platypus? Your illogical answer is so that they could eat one another in order to keep life going until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to specially design.

DAVID: The pattern of evolution is to advance to increasing complexity which obviously makes us the current endpoint and therefore, obviously, the currently observed goal. I don't have to know why God chose evolution as His method. It is your problem.

Again you slip in “current”, as opposed to one and only goal from the very beginning. This is one of your fixed beliefs, and I have indeed offered you two logical hypotheses that allow for it, but they both contradict another of your fixed beliefs: that God is in total control. Normally when people discuss hypotheses, they try to give reasons for their beliefs – as you do so admirably when defending your belief in a designing God. Now apparently you are leaving it to me to reconcile your various irreconcilable fixed beliefs! Well, if you can’t do it, nobody can, which suggests to me that at least one of those irreconcilable fixed beliefs must be wrong.

dhw: It is obvious that all forms of life need food, and by your admission that has nothing to do with the one and only goal of designing H. sapiens.

DAVID: Humans can't arrive by evolution over 3.8 billion years without the diversity of life to supply food in the balance of nature so life can continue to evolve. Perfect logic.

No longer perfect when you add that your God is in total control, had only one purpose – to specially design humans - but chose to achieve his purpose by NOT achieving his purpose until he had spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing millions of other life forms to eat one another. Once again, the illogicality lies in your attempts to combine your fixed beliefs.

David: It is a logical fact to me because I start by accepting the pattern of evolution as God's choice of method. You refuse to accept that and wander all over the place ascribing human reasoning to God all made up out of thin air.

If God exists, of course evolution was his choice, but as usual you leave out what the method was supposed to achieve! Specially designing millions of unrelated life forms as a method of specially designing one life form is what I do not accept.

dhw: If it’s not incomprehensible to you, why can’t you explain it, and why should I accept it when there are several different, alternative hypotheses which even you accept as being logical?

DAVID: I admit, at a human level they seem logical. But humanly logical alternatives do not mean God did it in the ways you wish. They are only human alternatives.

I have offered several ways, but all of them involve removing at least one of the logical contradictions between your fixed beliefs. I do not believe that your own attempts at logic are anything other than human, but I do believe that if God exists, his purposes and methods are more likely to be “humanly logical” than humanly illogical.