God and Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 06, 2019, 12:26 (2115 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I have clearly stated God may be unlimited or limited. History allows both possibilities since He chose to use evolution over 3.8 billion years Humans as the purpose fits either scenario.

dhw: One day you clearly state that he is in full control, and the next you say that he may have limits. Let’s settle, then, for your clear statement that either is possible. If his powers are unlimited, then you yourself cannot understand why he needed to spend 3.5+ billion years designing anything but the one thing he wanted to design (us). Possible explanation: we were not the only thing he wanted to design. He wanted the whole higgledy-piggledy bush (and as you say, enjoys/enjoyed it, like a painter who enjoys his paintings). If he has limits, that might explain why, in your scenario, he needed 3.5+ billion years to produce the only thing he wanted to produce: either he didn’t know how to do it, or – another possibility – he had no clear concept of “human” but the idea came to him later on in the course of his experiments.

DAVID: The bolds are wrong as I view the issues. I don't question His decision to evolve humans. It is not a decision by God I question or don't understand. That is your interpretation of my thinking. I accept it as what He decided to do. And I've said He might be limited in some way in evolutionary production, but I have always thought God had a clear-sighted goal of producing humans.

The first bolded explanation allows for a God without limits, and the last two cover a God with limits. The first of the latter gives him a clear sighted goal, but his “limit” is that he doesn’t know how to achieve it. All three solve the problem you can’t understand: why he would have spent 3.5+ billion years designing anything but the one thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: I cannot explain our appearance out of an evolution process on any other way. We are over-evolved based on all the other creatures and plants we see in nature's balances. WE are now the top predator, but the only one with compassion and introspection, about how we affect all the rest. And when we spot our mistakes, we do spot them and try to correct them. Chimps have no compassion over killing another chimp. Of course, Adler thinking.

Yes, we are special, but on Sunday I pointed out that no multicellular species were “necessary”, and all forms of life are “miraculous”. Your response was “generally agree”, but here we go again with the same old argument. We can’t explain the appearance of life itself or, once there was life, of ANY multicellular organisms. But two of the hypotheses you have bolded allow for your “singular goal” belief anyway. So I don’t know what you are objecting to.

I’m sorry that having expressed your certainty that your God watches everything with the same enjoyment (your own word) as a painter enjoying his own work, you have dropped the subject of this being a possible purpose, and of general freedom - not just human freedom - enhancing the interest. May I take this as an acceptance (I don’t ask for belief) of the feasibility of my alternative to your own hypothesis that humans were his singular purpose, that he specially designed every other life form etc., and he did so only for the purpose of getting them all to eat one another until he could specially design humans?