Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 15, 2019, 13:33 (1801 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I am not questioning evolution, and if God exists, then of course evolution was his method of achieving his purpose. But if his only purpose was to design humans, why according to you did he specially design dinosaurs, whale flippers, cuttlefish camouflage, monarch lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest? You don’t know, and that is why you admit that you have “no idea” why he chose such a method.

DAVID: Same refrain. What is evolution except designing all the animals you just listed?

Evolution is the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms. Nobody knows how this process works. Evolution does not mean that your God specially designed every single organism for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he could specially design the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens.

dhw: If you have no idea why he would choose your interpretation of his method in order to fulfil your interpretation of his purpose, you can hardly claim that your interpretations are logical.

DAVID: Same totally illogical reasoning. My 'no idea' means I have not entered God's mind to know why He chose long term evolution over direct creation, as in the Bible.

But you pretend that you HAVE entered God’s mind by assuming that he only wanted to produce H. sapiens, while your concept of evolution is that God specially designs every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder! Why bother to specially design the whale and the weaverbird's nest if he only wants to specially design humans? THAT is the combination of hypotheses that makes no sense. At least my hypothesis has the merit of logical coherence: if he wanted a free-for-all, the method (autonomous cellular intelligence) and purpose are perfectly matched, although they do not correspond to your own attempt to “enter God’s mind”.

DAVID: Control of human actions is never equivalent to a control of evolution itself! You are straining at gnats!

dhw: It is not an equivalent to control of evolution, it is an example of your God being willing to relinquish control over his creations. If he can watch unpredictable humans with interest, why can’t he watch unpredictable speciation with interest?

DAVID: So again you relieve Him of control. We will always differ here, as you propose a less than purposeful God.

I am not “relieving him of control”. I am proposing that his possible purpose was served by relinquishing control. You persist in claiming that creating something to watch with interest is not a purpose, and yet at the same time, you refuse even to offer us a purpose for creating life, including humans!

dhw: Watching to see how we use our free will and watching to see what his invention can produce are as purposeful as any purpose you can name, and they provide a perfectly logical explanation for all the natural wonders that have nothing whatsoever to do with your single purpose of producing H. sapiens.

DAVID: I can't understand the blank spot in your objection to make my choice accepting God's choice to evolve humans as illogical. If He chose to evolve us, He had to create all of the evolution we see.

Again, he apparently "had to" specially design whale flippers, cuttlefish camouflage and weaverbirds’ nests in order to specially design humans. And you find this logical. Once more: the proposal that he only wanted to “evolve” (for you = specially design) humans does not explain why he also chose to “evolve” (= specially design) every other life form extant and extinct.