Unanswered questions: universe's purpose and alien life II (General)

by David Turell , Monday, July 15, 2019, 15:47 (1956 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: My own view: if there is alien life, it will prove absolutely nothing, whether it’s highly sophisticated or only basic. Theists can say that their God in the course of eternity could create as many life forms as he liked, and they can argue among themselves about why he might want to create them. Atheists can say that the more life there is elsewhere, the clearer it is that life can emerge naturally in an infinity of energy and matter, once chance has assembled the ingredients. People with fixed beliefs can always interpret the facts to fit in with those beliefs.

DAVID: Written like a true agnostic. Many of us have fixed beliefs and find them reasonable, and reach those beliefs by studying a mass of actual evidence to reach them.

dhw: Of course. Dawkins would say exactly the same. For the record, I find your fixed belief in God, as based on the design argument, perfectly reasonable. I find your fixed belief that he specially designed every life form, and did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design – H. sapiens – unreasonable. And as I keep pointing out, even you have "no idea" why he did it this way. (See "Unanswered questions".)

Your same complaint. I have chosen to assume God chose to evolve humans as His method of creation. Yes, I have 'no idea' why He made that choice against the method of direct creation, which is described in the Bible. Your assessment that you find it 'unreasonable' simply means we disagree as to God's methods. The history of evolution is exactly as you describe it in your comment above.