Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Thursday, August 08, 2019, 12:38 (1715 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I accept our specialness, and I accept the design argument as a powerful one for the existence of God. Yet again: I do not accept that your God specially designed every life form in evolution’s history, or that he did so for the one and only purpose of producing H. sapiens.

DAVID: You are simply refusing to accept my view that God chose to use the mechanism of evolution to finally produce humans. Fine. I have the right to believe that.

dhw: You continue to twist the argument. If God exists, then of course he chose the mechanism of evolution to produce EVERY life form, and humans are the last life form (the “final product”) so far in the history of life. I have told you above what I do not accept – now bolded.

DAVID: That reply makes no sense. If God chose to evolve then the history of evolution tells us what He did.

Of course it does: if he exists, the history tells us that he created a huge and ever changing bush of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct. What makes no sense is the claim that all of them were specially designed, and yet his only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens.

DAVID: Your views of what He might have thought have humanizing aspects all over your approach. We/I/you cannot know why God chose that method of creation.

dhw: The above objection to your theory does not contain a single humanization. It is an attack on your “amalgam” of two premises which do not make sense when joined together. And you yourself have “no idea” why he would have chosen to specially design billions of life forms (plus lifestyles and natural wonders) to eat or not eat one another if his only purpose was to design H. sapiens.

DAVID: Again distorting 'my no idea' which always means I don't know why He chose evolution as His method.

As his method for what? Evolution for you means special design of every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder. So you don’t know why he chose to specially design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder if his only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens. Please stop trying to hide your theory behind the word “evolution”!

DAVID: Your questions about God's 'other purposes' is your fertile mind attempting to humanize God. Note the discussion in: Reading God's divine nature Part II

dhw: If you use the term “primary purpose”, it automatically means there are other secondary purposes. Elsewhere you have said that designing H. sapiens was his only purpose.

DAVID: A prime purpose of course means there are secondary ones , but all support creating humans: creating a universe which will support life, creating life which is self sustaining with the right resources on a designed Earth.

But humans are not the only life form that the universe supports! You have said that humans were his main or prime or primary purpose for creating life. What were his secondary purposes for creating life?

dhw: Which is it? I have given a detailed response to the article on God’s divine nature. Your insistence on purposefulness is already a humanization, and your insistence that you actually know what that purpose was, and that all other life forms were specially designed to eat or be eaten by one another until he achieved his only purpose, is the result of your fertile mind attempting to impose your anthropocentrism on your God.

DAVID: God can have purpose without humanizing him as you constantly attempt.

Fine. That does not explain why, if his one and only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, he spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing billions of other life forms (plus lifestyles plus natural wonders) to eat one another.