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

by dhw, Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 13:23 (5092 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

If there is a God, I would like to know what he is like. The only clue I have, other than unreliable man-made texts, is the world he created, and my only tools are reason, experience and science. Any concept must be derived from and consistent with what I know or think I know of the world. Here are some of the factors (and I would also call them facts) I need to link together if I'm to come up with a consistent pattern: 1) man came relatively late on the evolutionary scene. 2) There are gaps in the evolutionary theory (innovations, long periods of stasis and sudden "explosions", missing links). 3) Millions and millions of species, extinct and extant. 4) A wonderful world of joy, a terrible world of suffering. 5) There is no sign that God intervenes in human affairs.-Here is a theory (not a belief): God created the universe and the mechanism for life and evolution in order to give himself pleasure (explanation of (3)); occasionally he intervened, creating new organs and species (explanation of (2)); his experiments eventually led to humans (explanation of (1)); with their wide range of talents, humans provide him with a wide range of entertainment (explanation of (4) and (5)).
 
I have asked if there is anything in this theory that contradicts what others know of the world. Tony has been kind enough to take up the challenge, and below are quotes from his latest reply: 1) "I believe that they [dinosaurs] were necessary to turn this lump of rock into something inhabitable by humanity." 2) "IF this life is simply a step on a longer journey, then anything we experience here would be the cosmic equivalent of a skinned knee." 3) "I view all creation as a purposeful movement towards a goal that I do not yet understand." 4) "I have seen no false starts, no failed attempts, no out of place artifacts that would lend themselves to the idea of 'experimentation'."-A brief response: 1) Your unsubstantiated belief that the millions of species were needed to prepare the way for humans does not provide any factors to contradict my theory. 2) Your "IF" is like saying that if my theory is wrong, it is wrong. Such an "if" does not provide any factors to contradict my theory. 3) Your belief in a goal that you do not yet understand does not provide any factors to contradict my theory. 4) Experimentation does not mean failure. Every form of life is a successful experiment. Every innovation is a successful experiment.
 
I had asked you to present your own counter-version, but let me see if I can summarize it out of the answers you have given me: God's purpose in creating life was to create humans, though we don't know why, and he had to create millions of other forms of life in order to accomplish this, though we don't why, and he doesn't intervene in human affairs because maybe he is a loving father and maybe this life is a small step in a long journey, though we don't know where to, and maybe this will make the dead child's broken neck seem like a scratch.-I hope this is accurate, and I apologize if it's not, but please don't misunderstand me. I think my scenario presents logical solutions to all the problems I've listed; it's derived from those problems, and is not a preconception imposed on them. However, I'm not stating a belief (I'm a searching agnostic) or denigrating your own beliefs. I'm only asking in what way my hypothetical scenario conflicts with what we know of the world.