Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Thursday, May 16, 2019, 08:42 (1800 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: That is my interpretation.

Yes indeed, and you have “no idea” why your God would choose this method of designing H. sapiens.

DAVID: Twisted reasoning again. Evolving humans from single cells is God's choice…

Evolving EVERY life form from single cells is your God’s choice (although your definition of “evolving” is specially designing).

DAVID: …Assuming God is in charge, that is what history tells us. You won't accept the importance of our exceptionality as a key point to the reasoning. I'm with Adler, you are not.

I accept our exceptionality. I do not accept that your God specially designed every single life form, and did so in order that they should eat or not one another until he specially designed H. sapiens.

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

dhw: 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!

DAVID: I don't understand your comment: I claim humans were the main purpose!

You keep claiming that they were the ONLY purpose (which is what makes nonsense of your purposeful God’s specially designing every non-human life form) and you don’t like to offer any other purpose. What on earth is the point of telling us how purposeful your God is, and then saying that humans were the purpose, if you are not prepared to ask what was the purpose of humans? And why do you think that your God specially designed millions of life forms etc. that came and went, but it could not have been his purpose to design millions of life forms etc. that came and went?

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: His choice was to start with single cells and then evolve what history shows us He evolved! I don't understand your problem, which to me is a convoluted invention to continue a debate.

Yes, history shows us that what evolved from single cells were millions of different life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, the latest of which are humans. The problem is your insistence that he specially designed all of them, although the only thing he wanted to specially design was H. sapiens. Since you admit that you have no idea why he would choose such a method of producing the only thing he wanted to produce, I really don’t know why you continue the debate by trying to ignore this blatant incongruity!