Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Thursday, June 27, 2019, 13:24 (1974 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: [...] God viewed humans as his desired endpoint.

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

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

Yes, you can, but then you have to explain why he specially designed millions of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders. Your only answer so far has been that he designed them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design. Apparently Adler does not deal with this problem, and you cannot find anyone else who supports your explanation.

DAVID: You are dividing evolution into parts […]

Dhw: I do not know why you believe the weaverbird’s nest to be part of your God’s special design of humans.

DAVID: 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.

So who is dividing evolution up into parts? You cannot explain why your God would specially design the weaverbird part of evolution if he only wanted to design the human part of evolution.

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.

DAVID: 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.

So let’s be clear: he, who was in full control, knew he "had to" specially design every single one of millions of non-human life forms, life styles and natural wonders extant and extinct before he could specially design the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens. But this is not confusing.

DAVID: Just as you conceive of the beginning, the middle and the end of a play on stage.

For your information, I do no such thing. I begin with an idea, and then the characters take over. Generally I have no idea where the play is heading, and many writers work in the same way. It’s a good image. Thank you.

DAVID: 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.

There is nothing “weak” about a God who deliberately creates a mechanism that gives free rein to his creations. Hence, for example, human free will. Creation for the enjoyment of creation is a purpose. Why do you think it is “extremely purposeful” to design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s migration and the weaverbird’s nest in order to design the only thing he wanted to design, which was us?

David: (Under “The Mind of the octopus”): The octopus brain must be able to integrate all the sensory info coming from its eight legs. It is a strange but an advanced system. All part of the need for echoniches for food supply.

As above, your God’s extreme purposefulness now amounts to specially designing octopus brains and weaverbirds’ nests so that they can eat or not eat one another. You forgot to mention that his only purpose was to design H. sapiens. Please explain how these two extremely purposeful purposes fit together.