Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 17:53 (1941 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your response makes no sense since you continue to ignore my first step: God chose to evolve humans from start of life with bacteria. All 'non-human life' had to come first!
And
DAVID: The weaverbird nest and many other wonders of evolution were required to form ecosystems to supply food over the 3.5+ billion years evolution took to reach humans. He knew he 'had to' create the systems, vital to food supply. My 'had to' is well explained. Confusion about my theory is yours, not mine.

dhw: I don’t “continue to ignore” your first step; I continue to challenge it! Your God, who is always in control and whose only purpose from the start of life was to create H. sapiens out of bacteria, apparently “had to” wait 3.5 billion years before designing various other forms of human, and therefore “had to” design millions of non-humans to keep life going, but he didn’t “have to” because that was what he chose to do, although you have no idea why (we are not “privy” to his reasons). Sorry, but I continue to find this utterly confusing.

Your confused response continues to ignore the importance of my first assumption that God chose to evolve humans from bacteria. Start with that assumption and the rest must follow. You obviously don't accept my first step. The rest of your objections are the result in which you deny that God should have been willing to spend the time involved. As for God's reasons as to His choice of method by evolving God, I'd remind you, God is concealed and all of his reasons and purposes are educated guesses.

DAVID (Under "Side effects of defense mechanisms"): Part of evolutionary relationships may simply be unintended consequences, which brings us back to God as an impersonal being, not actually caring about humans welfare.

dhw: Now you have your always-in-control God specially designing things that have consequences he didn’t intend, and his one and only purpose may have been to create something he doesn’t care about. Here are some different ideas: maybe he deliberately designed a mechanism whereby “evolutionary relationships” and indeed evolution itself had free rein, and maybe he enjoyed watching the fruits of his inventiveness, which would be no more “humanizing” than the all too human attribute of not caring about what happens to other beings. Or maybe he experimented (no more humanizing or out of control than “unintended consequences”) or maybe humans were a late addition to his thinking.

Once again you have attacked my cardinal point that we cannot know if God cares about us. Invent God any way you wish, but the only basis in fact is that you imagined these possibilities.

DAVID (under “human evolution”): There is genetic evidence of at least six human strains in the past:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190715094918.htm

DAVID: This discussion certainly includes the recently discovered 'hobbits'. What this means to me is there was a genetic drive to produce hominins on the way to a goal of modern humans.

dhw: I thought it all meant to you that your always-in-control God, whose one and only purpose was to produce H. sapiens, specially designed all the different strains because he “had to” do it that way – the proof being that he did it that way, although you have no idea why (we are not "privy" to his reasons).

Again simple: assume God chose to evolve sapiens, and the history of evolution tells us exactly what He did. Above, you guess at all the possible evolutionary mechanisms God might have employed. All sheer guesswork, with no factual basis. Just fruits of your very fertile brain. My rule is keep it simple and follow the known history.