Let's study ID (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, August 29, 2021, 14:11 (1180 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Perfectly logical if you accept God has the right to create everything by any method He wishes, and you have accepted that premise.

dhw: Of course he has the right. I am only questioning the logic of the goal and method you impose on him.

DAVID: I didn't impose a method on God. I think God created our known historical facts. Evolution occurred and humans appeared at the end. Conclusion: God wised to create Humans and did it by evolving them from bacteria. There is no false logic involved.

And you also have him evolving (which for you means specially designing) every other life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, so clearly according to the above, he must also have wished to create them as well as humans (and their food), but the vast majority of them had no connection with humans, and so the false logic is your claim that his only purpose was to create humans (and their food).

dhw: What is not logical is that he only wanted humans plus their food to appear, and therefore designed lot of species and food that had no connection with humans and their food. STOP DODGING!

DAVID: You just left the logic above. Your inference is why didn't God just go to direct creation of us if that is all He wanted? That is you illogical humanizing objection. What He created is what He wanted to create over time.

Correct, except that you call it “illogical”. Quite clearly, if he wanted to create all the life forms that had no connection with humans and their food, then it makes no sense to claim that all he wanted to create was humans and their food. He must have wanted to create all the other life forms as well.

dhw: Last time you wanted to draw a parallel with humans and our goals, and I did so. All I want to do is write a book about agnosticism, and so first of all I write 20 books about gardening. You have skipped over the parallel you wanted to draw. Why? Because of course it illustrates precisely the same illogicality as your theory of evolution. So please stop dodging.

DAVID: Your discussion is using a human example and fails. Gardening has certainly nothing to do with agnosticism. I agree. That God chose to evolve us is fact if one believes in God as I do.

It was you who tried to draw comparisons between humans and God pursuing their goal, and so I gave you the analogy. You have agreed with it. And what you call a fact leaves out the “fact” that your God also chose to evolve (= specially design) countless life forms etc. that had no connection with humans (= 20 books on gardening).

DAVID: […] When will you realize God doesn't reason as you do?

dhw: When will you realize that maybe God does not reason as you do, since your own interpretation of his reasoning makes no sense even to you! (You have no idea why he would have chosen to design all the life forms etc. that had no connection with humans and their food. So maybe he didn't design them. Or maybe he did, but their purpose was not to enable him to design us.)

DAVID: All I admit is I have no idea why He chose evolution as his means of all progress, but history tells us the universe evolved after the BB, the Earth evolved, and after life started it evolved. You remain confused as you deal with your very human form of God.

Our disagreement begins with your interpretation of why he created life.

DAVID: Try to accept that history tells us what God decided to do and how He did it. Humans appear at the final curtain in the play of reality. Perhaps my dear playwright friend can understand it in his terms.

I can. And my play would never be performed if I introduced countless characters and story lines that had nothing whatsoever to with the situation at the end. Plays have to make sense. If God exists, I suspect that his "play" would also make sense.