Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Friday, August 16, 2019, 08:35 (1714 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The two bolds in your statement are totally in conflict with each other. God 'Evolving the whole of life' must be considered as God designing each stage like whale flippers.

dhw: You seem to have forgotten my (theistic) proposal that he chose to evolve the whole of life by designing an autonomous inventive mechanism that would enable organisms to do their own designing. Why "must" your "evolution = special design" be the only acceptable interpretation?

DAVID: You can interpret God any way you want. I view Him as purposeful and controlling and His evolved organisms, as presented, are not capable to do their own design, in my fixed view.

I have no doubt that if he exists he is purposeful. But I do not understand why he should be limited to your interpretation of his purpose, namely to designing H. sapiens, when the history of life shows a colossal bush of other life forms. This suggests that if he had your single purpose, he was not “controlling” (i.e. he could have chosen to relinquish control - as you believe he did with human free will). And your fixed view does not mean that another view is impossible.

DAVID: And you keep distorting my 'no idea' which refers only to my point that I do not know why God chose evolution in the first place over direct creation. Your continual distortion of my position will keep this thread going. I will not be misrepresented.

dhw: Evolution of what? You keep leaving out the fact that (a) your God “evolved” billions of non-human life forms etc. although his only purpose was to “evolve” H. sapiens, and you ignore the fact that preprogramming and dabbling are both forms of direct creation!
DAVID: My definition of direct creation is the Biblical story of one complete stage at a time, not a long-term evolution of forms.

Your theory is not biblical Creationism, but how can precise programming and dabbling be regarded as anything but forms of direct creation? I doubt if you will ever find a definition of Evolution as God’s long-term preprogramming and/or dabbling of all life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders.

dhw: If you feel I have misrepresented you, then please explain once and for all why your God fulfilled his sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens by first specially designing every other non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct so that all the life forms could eat or be eaten by one another.

DAVID: I'll repeat the proposition you refuse to recognize.

I wish you would simply give me a straight explanation of the above, as requested. Instead, we have to go over the same process of you splitting up your different beliefs, whereas it is the COMBINATION that makes no sense. So here we go again:

DAVID: God chose to evolve all forms starting with bacteria, and currently ending with humans. Why is that concept so hard to accept?

It is not hard to accept. What is hard to accept is that humans were his one and only purpose, and that is why he specially designed all the other non-human life forms to eat or be eaten by one another.

DAVID: I fully believe that He made choice, and that is more probable than your insistence on a God-given IM.

I know you that is your belief. You still have not explained what I asked you to explain.

DAVID: Your complaint suggests you believe God would not want to do it patiently over time. How do you know that? Controlling creations by evolutionary methods implies just exactly what I propose, designing all stages as they changed from simple to more complex. This statement should be quite clear to anyone who reads it.

My complaint is not that evolution takes time, or that it involves simple changing to more complex, but that if your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens, why did he design countless non-human life forms (plus non-human lifestyles and natural wonders) to eat or be eaten by one another?

DAVID: Doesn't God have the right to choose His methodology?

Of course he does. But that does not mean that your version of his method of achieving your version of his purpose is correct. So please let us have the explanation I asked for. If it helps you, perhaps you could say: He specially designed the whale’s flipper, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that all the different life forms would eat or be eaten by one another, and if he hadn’t done so, he would not have been able to fulfil his one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens because…..