Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 04, 2019, 18:31 (1780 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I simply believe God guided all of evolution and created the bush of life we see. Of course they had to eat each other.

But why did he “have to” specially design every single life form in the history of life if his only purpose was to produce H. sapiens, which he specially designed anyway?

You simply refuse to see that if God controlled evolution from the start of life until He reached the evolution of humans, He designed everything that came first . That is my belief. You have the perfect right to refuse to accept my thoughts, but that is why there is a chasm between us. That makes it illogical to you but not to me.

DAVID: He specially designed everything. H. sapiens was the final purpose.

dhw: What do you mean by “final”? Previously you have said it was his sole purpose. Are you now coming round to the view that he had other purposes for specially designing every life form, lifestyle etc., but after 3.5 billion years he suddenly came up with a new and “final” purpose? That fits in with one of the hypotheses I have offered you – that humans were a late afterthought. (Another was experimentation, to explain the rest of his creations.)

You know what I mean. I believe that humans are the final stage. Again you present humanizing thoughts about God.

dhw: History shows the evolution of millions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, with humans a late arrival. I have no problem with the theistic view that he used evolution to create what he wanted to create. I dispute the logic of your claim that he ONLY wanted to create H. sapiens, and therefore specially designed anything but H. sapiens for 3.5+ billion years.

DAVID: Our specialness gives us the answer, and He started with single-celled forms to get there.

dhw: Our specialness does not explain all the other special, non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders that started out from single cells.

Our specialness is way more special than all the other different forms. That is Adler's point

DAVID: He had to create the bush of life to reach our creation. We come from some type of ape form! You agree He used evolution. What is your problem.

dhw: You know very well what “my” problem is, because you yourself have no idea why your always-> in-total-control God “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms, lifestyles, econiches and natural wonders in order to “reach our creation”. My real problem is your refusal to acknowledge that our coming from some kind of ape form (apparently specially engineered by your God) does not explain the coming of everything else that has ever existed (also apparently engineered by your God) from other kinds of life form, if your God only ever wanted us in the first place.

Same narrow view: I believe God had to do what He did if He chose to evolve us from the first cells. I'm simply looking at the known history of evolution. I simply accept God's choice of method of creation. I don't need to know 'why' He made that choice. Obviously you do, so it remains your problem, not mine. I cannot help you. You have again distorted what I have presented.