Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Monday, August 19, 2019, 18:10 (1703 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Of course history tells us what happened! And for anyone who believes in God and evolution, of course it means that God chose evolution to evolve all organisms. But that does not mean he preprogrammed or dabbled them all

My interpretation is that God is the designer for all complex advances as the ID folks present. How else could those complex deigns appear with each speciation that involve many morphological rearrangements? My source for the obvious design is God.

DAVID: Never 'forced'. All according to a plan to evolve humans from bacteria.

dhw: According to you, he HAD TO (bolded) design the whole bush of life forms in order to fulfil his plan. What sort of plan means you “have to do” anything but what you want to do? […]

A plan that builds from single cells to very complex multicellular forms (evolve) working toward an eventual goal of humans. Again your statement wonders why my conceptualized God isn't impatient straining to get to the human level of evolution as soon as possible. History tells us He took the time it took. My God makes decisions and patiently plans.

dhw: See above, plus: “Simply my God did what He had to do based on His decision of how to create by steps”. His decision to fulfil his one and only purpose of creating H. sapiens by steps meant that he “had to” create the bush of non-human life forms that preceded H. sapiens. My counter proposal is that he wanted to create a bush of life, not had to.

Fine. Your God thinks differently than my God. But your God must know that econiches are very necessary to provide food energy for 3.8 billion years of evolution. The bush is necessary, not just a wish to design a bush .

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Of course. I don’t see him as a bumbler who creates a system that forces him not to do the only thing he wants to do. If I believed in him, I would see him as purposeful in all that he does, and I would believe that the ever changing bush of life was what he wanted, not merely a means of filling in time until he could fulfil his one and only purpose.

My God is purposeful and does not invent tasks just to fill time.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: My attack on your logic has nothing whatsoever to do with the alternatives I offer. Your theory would be illogical even if I offered no alternatives.

DAVID: Illogical only to you as you humanize God.

dhw: As above, wanting to create a bush is no more “humanizing” than wanting to create H. sapiens but having to create a bush first. But at least it is more logical than your God devising a plan which means that for 3.X billion years he “has to” do anything but what he wants to do.

Same old problem. Your humanization of God demands that He should impatiently jump to His goal. Your view of God is not my view. That gulf won't change.