Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Thursday, July 18, 2019, 12:42 (1737 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Yes, your statement of my belief is exactly correct and if not stated directly is always implied.

dhw: That IS direct creation!

DAVID: Of course it is, developing evolution by designed stages. What God did not do is 'direct evolution of humans' without the process of evolution. My constant view is God chose to evolve humans.

dhw: You keep using the word “evolution” to cover the incongruity of your theory. If your God specially designed all the stages of human evolution, of course he did direct evolution of humans! The process of evolution according to you entailed specially or directly designing every single life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder that ever existed. So your God chose to directly design every stage of everything. But what you have now left out is the fact that according to you the ONLY thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens. Therein lies the incongruity!

DAVID: I have clearly stated that I view Humans were God's goal in creating a stepwise process of evolution. God knew He had to create all the stages of development before He would arrive at humans. The bold above is your complete distortion of my position. Why do you persist in repeating it?

You clearly state that humans were his goal, but you deny that humans were the only thing he wanted! Sometimes you have talked of “goals”, but when asked what other goals he had, you come up with none. Where is the distortion? A goal is what you want. If there is no other goal, then there is nothing else you want! You have also denied saying that your God “had to” create millions of other life forms, econiches etc. in order to achieve his goal, but then you repeat what you denied: “he had to create all the stages of development" - which includes every new life form etc. -“to arrive at humans”! Why? You even repeat this:

DAVID: Complete confusion of my view, as usual. Your one-track mind must realize that if God chose to evolve humans stage by stage from bacteria He 'had to' design all the preceding stages. God was never 'forced'. He chose this method according to His own reasons, to which we are not privy.

Firstly, why are you limiting evolution to humans here? The problem with your theory is that he “chose to” evolve (for you = specially design) millions of non-human life forms, although humans were his goal, as you keep repeating! Secondly, if we are not privy to the reasons why he chose to evolve humans in stages or why he chose to evolve all the non-human life forms that preceded humans, it means we (or rather you) have no idea why he chose to do so! There is no distortion or “complete confusion” of your view! You simply repeat what I have said, try to put it into different words, and leave out the fact that “all the preceding stages of evolution” include millions of non-human life forms etc!

dhw: My proposal is that, if he exists, either he wanted them to do their own designing, or he designed them because he wanted to design them. I even go so far as to explain his possible purposes for doing so. How does this make him purposeless?

DAVID: My God is in full control, knows exactly what He wants, and chose to create humans by designing the known historical stages of evolution. Your supposed God is part human in thought, except in the bolded segment of your comment above. That I agree with!

The known historical stages of evolution include every new life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution, and you don’t know why he “had to” design them all in order to get to his goal of designing humans. No distortion. If you agree that he wanted to design them, and you keep insisting that your God is purposeful and mine is not, please explain why you think he wanted to design, for example, the weaverbird’s nest.