Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 16, 2019, 13:13 (1955 days ago) @ David Turell

Taken over from the posts on “alien life”, as this sums up the whole argument, though it will continue so long as you insist on leaving out those of your fixed beliefs which clash with one another.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: 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.

The history shows only that there have been millions of life forms, econiches etc. extant and extinct. Once again you leave out the fact that your concept of evolution is that your God specially designed every single life form etc. in history, and every single stage in human evolution, either by preprogramming or by dabbling. That IS direct creation! Your only concession to evolution is that the directly created changes take place in existing organisms, i.e. you accept common descent. He therefore devoted as much personal attention to the weaverbird’s nest as he did to fiddling with the pre-whale’s legs to turn them into flippers (add a few million other examples) as he did to fiddling with human brains and pelvises. That is what you mean by your God “running” (the word you use later) the process of evolution, and so you have no idea why your God chose to specially design (directly preprogramme or dabble) ALL these non-human organs and organisms etc. (= running evolution) instead of just specially designing (directly preprogramming or dabbling) the only thing he wanted to specially design (directly preprogramme or dabble).

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

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

DAVID: Having humans as a goal by evolving them does not mean God had tunnel vision. God knew He needed to supply ecosystems to support the need for food energy over the time evolved. He understood what the entire process required. Your imagined version of God in this comment diminishes my version of God's thoughts. Again, misrepresenting my thoughts and logic.

Here are the thoughts you impose on your God. Please correct any that are a misrepresentation. “I am in total control. The only thing I want to design (by preprogramming or dabbling) is H. sapiens. I will start doing the only thing I want to do in 3.5+ billion years’ time. Meanwhile, I will pass the 3.5 billion years by designing lots of different econiches containing lots of different specially designed life forms (to eat or not eat one another), lifestyles and natural wonders which will come and go and have nothing to do with humans. Specially designing humans requires my specially designing whale flippers, monarch butterflies’ migration, and the weaverbird’s nest.”

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 us, 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.
DAVID (later): I've agreed only to the bolded segment as below:

What bolds below? A bit confusing?

dhw:[…] 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.

DAVID: Your continuous unreasonable distorted complaint, especially to distorting the bolded sentence. My 'idea' is to accept that God chose to evolve humans by running the process of evolution. My 'no idea' is that I don't know why He made that choice over direct creation.

See above for an analysis of what you appear to mean by “evolution”.