Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Friday, June 28, 2019, 16:12 (1973 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't have to explain anything. I believe God chose to evolve humans from a start with bacteria. Thus the history of evolution is all His work. ID folks agree with me but don't name their required designer as God.

dhw: And they don’t claim that your God designed every single life form extant and extinct for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was us. The only support you have is for the existence of a designer.

True, but that is because they are not discussing evolution at our level of inquiry

DAVID: You are trying to deny God knew what He had to do to get from bacteria to humans.

dhw: I am trying to deny that your God “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms extant and extinct in order to specially design humans. Even you can’t tell us why he “had to” do it this way. So maybe there was another reason for designing them all, or maybe he didn’t design them all.

I accept that God ran evolution and designed all stages. Hes had to do it 'this way' because that is what history tells us.

DAVID: Because your vision of God is not very purposeful, as you humanize His thinking. Our vision of God differs widely.

dhw: What is the distinction between “purposeful” and “very purposeful”? Why is it right to say that your very purposeful God’s purpose was to create humans, but it is wrong to ask what was his purpose in creating humans, not to mention whales, monarch butterflies and weaverbirds’ nests? What is the point of insisting on “purposefulness” if you refuse to debate what the purposes might be?

You are asking me to repeat previous discussions. Econiches for food on the way to humans. Why can'rt you accept that God chose to evolve humans starting with bacteria? Questioning God's motives at a human level of thought solves nothing .

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I have explained it to my satisfaction. God ran all of the process of evolution from the origin of life until what is present now.The history of evolution shows exactly what He did.

dhw: The history of evolution shows a succession of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders. It does not show that your God designed every single one of them, and it does not show that your God’s purpose was that they should eat or not one another until he specially designed H. sapiens, which was his one and only purpose.

You are right. There is no proof that God did anything. There is a concept called 'faith'.

DAVID: Does your vision of God accept that He ran all of evolution? Simply His 'purpose' was to evolve humans with a start at bacteria. That is quite clear to me.

dhw: If God exists, my vision of him is that he set the process of evolution in motion. If he specially designed every organism, as you believe, then I would like a logical explanation as to how every organism that he specially designed could possibly serve the one and only purpose of specially designing humans.

He designed humans from precursor primates. He got to that stage from previous stages of evolution.