Natural Wonders & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, September 29, 2019, 08:25 (1880 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'll repeat: if God is the Creator what happened is what He chose to do. Again, you want your God to be in a hurry, very human-like.

dhw: Of course if he exists, what happened is what he chose to do. And I’m suggesting that what happened provides no support for the theory that a totally-in-control God chose to create billions of non-life-bearing solar systems, stars, planets etc., and billions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens.

DAVID: I'm sorry you can't see the logic. God evolves what He wants.

dhw: It is of course logical that God, if he exists, does what he wants. However, I’m sorry you can’t see how illogical it is to have him “want” just one planet and just one life form, and yet specially design billions of other planets and life forms.

DAVID: Those exploding stars created the elements needed for life. God works through the processes built into the universe. I keep telling you God evolves His goals.

There are believed to be about 10 billion galaxies and a billion trillion stars in the observable universe (not to mention the unobservable universe). Do you honestly believe that every single one of them was specially designed to explode and create the elements needed for life on Planet Earth? And yes, you keep telling me that God evolves his goals, and for you “evolve” means specially designed, and for you his “goals” means everything he designed is for the single goal of producing H. sapiens. That is what we keep arguing about. It makes nonsense of the history.

DAVID: You like guessing. I don't try.

dhw: Your whole theory is an illogical guess about God’s single purpose, total control, and needing to specially design every branch of the bush to “cover” his inexplicable delay. What you “don’t try” is to recognize that its illogicality could mean it is wrong, and to consider other explanations of your God and his work which ARE logical.

DAVID: The history of creation tells us how God the Creator did it. Nothing illogical required if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history.

Your first statement is certainly true, if God exists, but history does not tell us that he did it your way! I do wish you hadn’t written your second statement. How can you, a human being, tell us that something is logical provided we do not apply human logic to it? You have spent years applying human logic to the case for design as evidence of a designer. What would you say to an atheist whose only answer to your logic was that blind chance is logically the creator provided we do not apply human reasoning to the actual history, because the impersonal universe cannot be “humanized”? (See also under “whale adaptation”.)