DAVID: Cosmology: milky way size is enormous (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, July 01, 2019, 11:31 (1973 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: You simply cannot answer the question why your God would have created billions of small galaxies incapable of allowing life if his sole purpose was to create human beings, just as you cannot answer the question why he would have created millions of different, non-human life forms if humans were his one and only purpose. Your answer is always: that is what he did. If he exists, yes, the universe and the history of life are the result of what he did. But this does NOT fit in logically with the one and only purpose of creating humans! In both cases – if he exists – a logical explanation (as you keep agreeing) is either a free-for-all (let’s see what happens if...) or experimentation (I’d like to produce life...a being a bit like me that I might have a relationship with...). But your fixed beliefs won’t allow you even to contemplate such a God (see “Unanswered questions”), and so you insist that your reading of his mind, purpose and method is correct, even though you have “no idea” why he would choose such a method to fulfil such a purpose.

DAVID: You have forgotten I started out like you, an agnostic, but unlike you I was what I would call a soft agnostic, simply accepting what medical school taught me about living beings. And that included evolution as a natural occurrence. Once I delved into what I would call evidence, it became obvious to me God had to exist. I do not have the possibility of thinking of God as you do, partially humanized, and I think that is what partially keeps you as an agnostic. You want to understand God's personal thoughts as means of possibly accepting He exists while harboring extreme doubts. It is no wonder we do not come together. We are worlds apart in our individual thoughts. I've developed faith and you can't.

You have forgotten that I have no problem with your faith in the existence of God, or with the argument for design. The entire problem in all these discussions is your fixed beliefs that although he is all powerful (no limitations), always knows exactly what he is doing, and is in total control of everything (except human free will), he specially designed every non-life-bearing galaxy and specially pre-programmed or dabbled every non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, and he did so with the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens; you have no idea why he would have chosen this method of producing the only thing he wanted to produce, and you do not know of any theistic scientists, scholars or philosophers who insist on the above combination of fixed beliefs. I’m sorry, but my being an agnostic does not disqualify me from pointing out logical flaws in your arguments or from speculating (nobody can do more than that) on possible alternative theistic explanations of life’s history, none of which are any more or less “human” than your own.