Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 28, 2019, 20:16 (2034 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: It is perfectly logical to assume God chose to evolve humans as His means of creation. It requires no further speculation.

dhw: For anyone who believes in God and evolution, of course it is logical to assume that he chose evolution as his means of creation! And he used it to create not just humans but also billions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, and that is the problem for your anthropocentric interpretation of life’s history, which you cannot solve and therefore try to gloss over,

If God chose to evolve humans from the start of life (and you agree He had that right of choice), He had to do it through all the levels of complexity until He arrived at humans. Taht is what evolution implies and, in fact, requires. To me you are totally confused in your objection.

DAVID: You refuse to consider Adler's philosophic position about our specialness, as a way to define God's purpose.

dhw: You have simply ignored my response to this....That is the COMBINATION of speculations you refuse to quit, despite the fact that you have no idea why he would have chosen your speculative method to achieve your speculative purpose rather than any of the others I have proposed.[/i]

I've ignored it because it makes no sense. Adler's long book was exactly to establish our specialness as fully demonstrating our role as God's endpoint. It comes across as an extremely important philosophic concept. You might get a copy and read it .

DAVID: If He created life, it is perfectly logical He proceeded to design forms in evolution to achieve His definite purpose as outlined by Adler. The God I envision is very firm in his resolve. Yours is squishy. And later: Your view of a mamby-pamby God is not mine.

dhw: More slithering. You have no idea why your God chose to specially design billions of non-human forms in order to specially design the only form he wanted to design. You keep admitting that you can’t explain it, and that all my alternatives fit in logically with the history of life. The idea that your God may have created something for his own enjoyment does not deprive him of his firm resolve or of his power. Why on earth you should consider that your own proposed analogy of a painter enjoying his art makes the artist squishy and namby-pamby I don’t know.

Why should I bother repeating that evolution is obviously developing from single cells to the human brain with all those forms necessarily in between? How else would God do it? Your objections are totally illogical.

dhw: Back to your insistence on God’s purposefulness, which is limited to specially designing a bush of life forms for the sole purpose of eating or not eating one another until he specially designs H. sapiens, for which he has no purpose, or if he has, we mustn’t talk about it because you happen to know that your God has no characteristics in common with his creations (except perhaps enjoyment, desire for admiration and for a relationship with us).

DAVID: We have discussed a plethora of possible logical reasons for God to create humans. The only thing we can safely say with assurance is that He wanted to do it.

dhw: The only reasons you have come up with are that God wanted us to admire his works, and also wanted to have a relationship with us. Please give us your other proposals, and explain to us why these are not “squishy” or “namby-pamby”.

I view God very differently than you, as you try to imagine Him. I see Him as totally purposeful while you constantly fill him with human thought patterns.