Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Monday, July 15, 2019, 10:25 (1956 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have distorted again by totally twisting my explanation: I have stated my belief is that God chose to evolve humans, starting with bacteria.

I know that is your belief. But you keep ignoring the fact that according to you, evolution means your God specially designs everything, which includes every other multicellular life form as well as humans! No distortion here, just an omission by you.

DAVID: Recognizing that God, as creator, created the universe, it appears He has complete powers of direct creation, but with humans, we see they appeared through evolution.

As did every other multicellular life form, each of which he specially designed! You keep telling us that your God either preprogrammed or dabbled not only every life form, but every stage of human evolution – e.g. the pelvis and the brain and the rest of the item you’ve listed under “human evolution”, and as you confirm in your next comment:

DAVID: Therefore, it is obvious God chose to evolve humans by directing evolution, designing all stages on the way.

But also designing all stages of every other multicellular organism that ever lived, although according to you he only wanted to design humans!

DAVID: You are simply denying He is a designer through evolution. But as I have shown He created the universe and evolved it, created the Earth and evolved it to support life, created life and evolved it to humans. Direct creation and then evolution is his obvious methodology. You do not directly discuss this approach to understanding God's actions. You revert to distortion.

If God exists, I accept that he is a designer through evolution, since I believe evolution happened! But please re-read my next comment:

dhw: But what is not logical is that his one and only purpose was to “evolve” (which for you means specially design) humans, and yet he chose to “evolve” (= specially design) millions of NON-HUMAN life forms extant and extinct. You simply refuse to put your different fixed beliefs together, and it is the COMBINATION which you cannot explain: 1) single purpose; 2) your God always in control; 3) evolution means your God specially designs every life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder; 4) therefore, for 3.5 billion years he specially designed anything but the one thing he wanted to design. And I should add that you have “no idea why”.

DAVID: This view of yours is that God is not really purposeful from the beginning and has no idea of how to conduct purposeful activity to achieve a goal. You imply a confused God who dithered around with all of the bush of life rather than directly creating humans. The bush of life was a necessary initial creation to provide the ecosystems that support all of life, including humans. God knows what He is doing even if you don't.

Your reply totally ignores the comment you are replying to, which points out the logical flaws in your own theory, and you also ignore the following comment, with which you agreed!

dhw: My starting point is that if God exists, he would know what he wants, and we have no reason to suppose that his logic will be incomprehensible to, especially since there are several alternative hypotheses which are perfectly logical. It is also perfectly logical to assume that if he created our consciousness with all its attributes, there would be common ground between his attributes and ours. Of course ALL the hypotheses are guesswork (including the very existence of your God). But please note once more that unlike yours, none of my hypotheses represent a fixed belief – that is why I offer different hypotheses.

DAVID: The bolds above are exactly what I think. Your 'unfixed beliefs' lead you to imagine a very humanized God.

dhw: When I say he would know what he wants, I mean he has a purpose. He is not “unpurposed”. And yes, I offer purposes which we humans can understand. And I am delighted to see that you now agree at last that it is perfectly logical to assume that he and we may have common attributes. There is therefore no justification for dismissing logical alternative theories that entail human attributes in order to cling to the illogical four-part theory outlined above.

DAVID: Your logical alternatives ignore the series of logical steps I have presented above about God's motives and methods of action, while you continue to humanize your concept of God.

I have accepted the logic that if your God exists, he used evolution to produce all forms of life, including humans. I do not accept your fixed belief that evolution means special design of every single life form etc., or that every special design was geared to the one and only purpose of producing H.sapiens. By your own admission, it is perfectly possible that your God has human attributes. In some of my logical alternatives, however, these would explain why he might have specially designed millions of non-human life forms although his only purpose was to design humans – a theory which you have “no idea” how to explain.