If God exists, why did he create life? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, December 09, 2010, 09:34 (5097 days ago)

PART ONE-On the "Dodo" thread, we discussed four evolutionary scenarios. On that thread, as I have done on other threads too, I already suggested a motive for creation, and that is what I'd like to discuss now. First, though, a comment on the scenarios. The simplest by far is the atheist one, which involves a single giant leap of faith: namely, that the mechanism for life and evolution could fashion itself by chance, after which the whole process moves step by step, branch by branch, until it gets to us (so far). No mystery about where God came from, which in view of his complexity makes him even more incredible than the first chance-created molecule. No need for all the squabbling religions, speculations, interpretations, colleges, books, churches, mosques, synagogues, priests ... or the whole vast industry that is devoted to "The God Delusion". David's theist evolutionary scenario is exactly the same as the atheist's ... a single mechanism to start it all off, and the rest follows automatically. The one difference is that the mechanism is deliberately created by God right from the start to evolve the way it has done, with no further guidance required. The other two versions are that God created the mechanism, but intervened in order to experiment ... either because he didn't know where it was all heading, or because he wanted to create a spiritual image of himself but didn't know how best to incorporate it into a physical form.-Once you accept the atheist version, there's no more to be said ... which is a strong point in its favour ... and so we shall leave it. This thread deals only with the hypothetical motives of a hypothetical God, and starts out from the theory that life began with a few forms or one, and branched into David's "bush", culminating (so far) in humans. When I first read Darwin (in my late teens) and was converted from atheism to agnosticism, my eyes were opened to the now obvious fact that so many species of animal had exactly the same form as us: four limbs, two eyes, two ears, mouth, breathing, digestive and circulatory apparatus, brain etc. We are all variations. In Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme by Paganini, there's a magical section (18th variation) which I'm sure everybody knows, in which Rachmaninov slows Paganini's theme down and inverts it, to create one of the loveliest melodies you'll ever hear. I'm willing to bet that he didn't start out with that melody in mind. I don't know of any artist, writer or composer who knows precisely what's coming when he/she starts. They may even plan the work in detail, but every stroke, word and note brings new ideas with it. That is how I can imagine God working, as I will try to explain in the rest of this post.-Any speculation on God's motives has to take in what we know or think we know about the history of life. For example, over billions of years there were no humans, 200 million years ago there were dinosaurs, which eventually disappeared, and there were bacteria which go back to the beginning and are still with us. Now on the principle that nobody does nothin' for nothin', God must have hoped to get somethin' ... otherwise, why bother? Bacteria are essential, so God wouldn't have needed any motive other than their usefulness for his project. But what would he have hoped to get out of dinosaurs? No animal we know, other than ourselves, is capable of communing with him. There were generations upon generations, and species upon species of dinosaurs for 160 million years, and if you truly believe that every one of them was essential for the creation of humans, so be it. I don't. Nor do I believe that dinosaurs developed technologies or philosophies or art or religion. I don't think they progressed beyond what was necessary for survival, and in the end they couldn't even achieve that. So what was the point for God? There are, as I see it, only two things God could have done with the dinosaurs. Watched them, and experimented with them. (In passing, let's note that battles for territory and/or dominance, killing for food, selfishness as a crucial factor for survival were all integral to life before man ... all forerunners of the evil that many religious people think began with humans.) Why would he watch them? For the same reason as we would, and do ... entertainment (Jurassic Park). Why would he experiment? To see what else he could come up with (new species, new organs, new abilities ... I'm thinking specifically here of flight, as the first birds are believed to have appeared during the Mesozoic era). What else could he have hoped to get out of the dinosaurs?-Continued in Part Two