Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Sunday, September 01, 2019, 12:22 (1911 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Logic suggests that an always-in-control designer with a single goal would indeed focus all his powers on designing the one thing he wanted to design. You explain this by telling us that your God has no human attributes and his logic is not the same as human logic. How do you know?

DAVID: I do not know or pretend to understand God's logic. God does what God does. I understand the evidence of history to know him through His works. Again you want the God described in Genesis. He does not exist. Theological thinking is much more mature than that. (dhw’s bold)

Firstly, how do you know he does not exist, but secondly I do not want anything except to know why a God who has a single purpose (to design H. sapiens), and according to you directly designs every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life, decides to put off fulfilling his single purpose for 3.X billion years, therefore has to specially design all the other life forms etc., and then starts specially designing bits and pieces of H. sapiens to be passed on by various hominins and homos until he specially designs the special features that make H. sapiens different from all the rest! You even admit that you do not understand his logic!

DAVID: God is concealed. Any assessment of His logic is guesswork. The God you attempt to present is totally humanized

dhw: So your faith that he has no human attributes, and thinks and works in ways that do not conform to human logic, is guesswork.

DAVID: No, I have said any statement concerning God's logic must be guesswork as He has never directly told us how or Why he thinks what He thinks or does what He does, so al we can do is study his works: all of reality.

Why “no”? You keep stating that God’s logic is different from ours and you don’t understand it. That is a statement concerning God’s logic and is supposed to justify your fixed belief or faith in your guess that he lacks human attributes and works in ways that defy human logic. And so you think your guess entitles you dismiss any other guess.

DAVID: I don't dismiss it. I study the facts of our reality understanding God created it. I know as a fact that God uses an evolutionary process to form the universe is its current form, to form the Earth in its current form, and to evolve life reaching the pinnacle of a human race. All actual history.

Yes, if God exists, that is the history. What is not history is your guess that your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens, plus all the wild guesses listed above concerning his extraordinarily roundabout way of achieving that purpose.

dhw: This is like a dog chasing its tail. I’m afraid I don’t see why any human would want to have faith in a guess which they themselves find illogical (you have no idea why he chose the evolutionary method you attribute to him) on the grounds that they have faith in the guess that God’s logic is incomprehensible to humans.

DAVID: You have, as usual, distorted the meaning of my statement about 'no idea' concerning God's choice to evolve.

Evolution according to you is the history of your God’s special design of all life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders for the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens. I quote you: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time?” Exactly the same as today’s “I do not pretend to…understand God’s logic.”

DAVID: What God does is never illogical, but His choice, for which we never can know His reasoning. I find your reasoning in this area totally illogical, as you try to invent a humanized God.

Never illogical by whose standards, if you keep telling us that his logic is different from ours and you yourself do not understand it? You keep trying to invent a choice which you agree is illogical by human standards, and your only justification for rejecting other interpretations of his choice is that they are logical but you know your God doesn’t think logically by human standards. How about the possibility that he does, and your interpretation of his choice is wrong?