Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Monday, June 24, 2019, 10:56 (1977 days ago) @ David Turell

Transferred from the “Milky Way” thread, to avoid repetition:

dhw: According to your concept of evolution, your God chose to specially design every single life form that ever existed, although he only wanted to specially design humans. I argue that this makes no sense.

DAVID: As usual you are separating the process of evolution into separate parts. The concept of evolution that must folks recognize, is that life started with single cells and seamlessly developed into a bush of life, with humans at the top of the bush as evidenced by their complexity.

That is precisely the theory of common descent to which I subscribe. I will even accept the “top of the bush” if by that you mean the latest and most complex of species. But your concept of evolution is that your God specially designed every “part”, i.e. every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct, and you cannot explain why he specially designed all these “parts” if the ONLY thing he wanted to design was us.

DAVID: I see God as the guiding engineer of the process, totally in charge. I see you viewing God as performing illogically.

If God exists, then of course he is the guiding engineer of the process, but that does not mean he specially designed everything, or that he did so for the sole purpose of getting all life forms to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed humans. THAT is your illogicality. You have yourself admitted that all my alternative hypotheses are totally logical.

dhw: I originally asked you if ANYONE supported your hypothesis that your God specially designed every life form etc., and did so for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed H. sapiens. Clearly Adler doesn’t and the ID-ers don’t. It would appear, then, that you are on your own.

DAVID: Just as you use scientific opinions that fit your desires and extrapolate how intelligent cells might be, I have my own theories based on ID research.

Yes indeed. I am merely pointing out that you have not yet quoted ANY scientist who supports your theory as summarized above.

DAVID: You refuse to accept the concept of God choosing to evolve life from bacteria to humans as a unitary process.

Answered above. You refuse to accept the illogicality of your combination of hypotheses. Evolution does not mean special design of all life forms by God, or that they were all specially designed in order for him to specially design only one species! God’s choice could have been to create a mechanism enabling organisms to do their own creating, and THAT would logically explain the vast variety of life forms etc. which you cannot explain.

DAVID: Your interpretation of God's use of evolution is a human view of God's mind. Quit humanizing Him.

I was always under the impression that you were as human as I am, and I find your human view of your God's mind strangely illogical, as explained above.

dhw: We do not know your God’s nature, and so we can only speculate about it. Why, then, do you stick rigidly to a hypothesis for which you can find no logical explanation, and yet recognize the logic of my various theistic hypotheses, but dismiss them purely on the assumption that your God does NOT think with human-type logic?

DAVID: God's difference is something you give lip service to, but do not fully understand as you constantly humanize His thinking. My view of His nature and yours are wildly different. Your God is described as half-human in thought.

Do you fully understand the nature of God, then? How do you KNOW that despite your belief in his wanting a relationship with us, and his wanting us to admire his work, and his enjoying his own work like a painter enjoying his own paintings, he does NOT share any of the attributes of the creatures he designed?