Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 26, 2019, 15:32 (1975 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: It makes no sense to your humanized God, as you imagine Him. God viewed humans as his desired endpoint.

dhw: An opinion stated as fact. You cannot read God’s mind any more than I can.

I can make that exact assumption based on the specialness of humans as com pared to what they evolved from. (Adler)

DAVID: Evolution is one whole process. You are dividing evolution into parts, make everything else and then pop in humans.

dhw: That is precisely what you have proposed: he specially designed every life form extinct and extant, and then specially designed humans. Yes, evolution is a “whole process” if you believe in common descent, with millions of life forms coming and going. Each species is a “part”, and according to you, humans are unlike any other species, which makes them a special “part”. I do not know why you believe the weaverbird’s nest to be part of your God’s special design of humans.

That is where your thinking is confused. Weaverbirds are just one tiny part of the whole process of designed evolution. Humans have no direct relation to any specific bird but are the result God designed.

DAVID: You won't accept the importance of econiches for food supply. Only plants can make their own food.

dhw: Of course econiches are important for food supply. But that obvious fact does not explain why your God would specially design all these different econiches to feed millions of different life forms which he has specially designed, when according to you the only species he wanted to create and did eventually specially design was us.

DAVID: Your strange version. Evolution is one process used to create humans. All under one original purpose. Stop dividing it up!

dhw: Evolution is one process which history shows to have created millions of different life forms. Once again: you are dividing evolution up into lots and lots of different econiches, life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, all of which you claim were/are specially designed and yet were necessary to fulfil your God’s sole purpose of specially designing humans,though you have no idea why they were necessary.

I've simply used the history of evolution, and concluded God chose to control and design that history.

DAVID: As long as you humanize God, He will appear as weak and confused as most humans can be. It is your problem, not mine.

dhw: Where do you get weakness and confusion from? Why, for instance, is it weak and confused to propose that your God enjoys his own creativity? What is confused about the deliberate creation of a mechanism that will provide an infinite variety of creations? Even within your own hypothesis, why is it weak and confused to perform experiments and observe their results? Your rigid hypothesis presents a God who only wants one thing but specially designs millions of other things, as described repeatedly above. As long you impose your own interpretation of his purpose and method, the obvious confusion will be yours, not your God’s.

I'm not confused, but seem that way on your muddled approach. How often do I have to repeat that God chose to evolve humans from bacteria? God created life and has controlled evolution, and at the current end of the process very special humans appeared? My description of God's actions follows the known history of evolution. He knew what had to be created over 3.8 billion years. Just as you conceive of the beginning, the middle and the end of a play on stage. God is not disjointed in His planning and thoughts from beginning to end. You are the one slicing up his thinking process. You want a weak God who gives up control. I see God as extremely purposeful, not playing with evolution for entertainment.