Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 17, 2019, 19:00 (1707 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, August 17, 2019, 19:23

DAVID: My definition of direct creation is the Biblical story of one complete stage at a time, not a long-term evolution of forms.

dhw: Your theory is not biblical Creationism, but how can precise programming and dabbling be regarded as anything but forms of direct creation?

DAVID: Of course each tiny stage is a direct creation, but not the giant step creation as the Bible states. That is all I am saying.

dhw: You wrote: “I do not know why God chose evolution in the first place over direct creation”, and I pointed out that your interpretation of evolution (divine preprogramming and/or dabbling) is a form of direct creation. I'm now confused over whether you think evolution means tiny stages (Darwinism) or giant steps (Creationism, exemplified by the Cambrian), but the question remains as to why your God directly created every non-human life form if the only thing he wanted to directly create was H. sapiens. Here comes your answer:

dhw: 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...

DAVID: Because the food supply was absolutely necessary over the time involved. Note the econiches are exquisitely designed to maintain the balance of nature as evidence of God's planning. My view is God knew in advance how to do it over time. Your view suggests God was shortsighted, fumbling his way long.

dhw: Absolutely necessary for what? Answer: He had to design the whale’s fin, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest to fill in the time before he could do the only thing he wanted to do because he knew he couldn’t do it until 3.X billion years had gone by, although he was the one who created the whole system in the first place.

To answer your question about creation, I view God's system of evolution as small stepwise advances, except the Cambrian, as history shows. I think the evolution of the Earth as the perfect planet to support life, which God also controlled, reached a point of an environmental status where the Cambrian Explosion was appropriate to happen. All shown by the known history.

dhw: Why can’t you imagine your God directly designing all these life forms because he wanted to design them for their own sake and not just as a means of passing time? Or designing them because he was experimenting? Or designing a mechanism that would come up with its own variations which he could “watch with interest” (you used that expression some time ago in one of your more open-minded moments)?

That is your imagination about God, not mine. My God is very purposeful. He knew those designs were required interim goals to establish the necessary food supply to cover the time He knew He had decided to take.

dhw: I do not have “a” view of your God. I offer alternatives. However, it does seem to me that a God whose only purpose is to design one particular species and who spends 3.X billion years designing anything but that one species might be viewed as shortsighted and fumbling his way along. If I believed in him, I would tend to believe that he wanted to specially design whatever he specially designed. (And that might include an inventive mechanism to produce the great bush of non-human life forms that preceded H. sapiens.)

Of course He 'wanted to design' what He knew He had to design to evolve humans. You are still humanizing Him, as your imagination runs wild. I look at history and try not to extrapolate any unnecessary theories. Simply, my God did what He had to do based on His decision of how to create by steps. All of those designed organisms were a part of his plan. My God was not the bumbling God you portray by referring to Him as designing "just as a means of passing time? " My in-charge God doesn't lollygag. Your complaint about Him taken all that time is simply your lack of viewing God as I do. And that is the obvious difference between us. As I studied and left agnosticism behind I developed an image of God in which I believe.

The reason I have persisted in continuing this debate is your complaint that I am illogical in this concept of God using evolution. What is illogical to me is your approach to imagining God and making Him quite human, which then you translate into I am illogical. Not at all. It is your own problem.