Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Friday, August 16, 2019, 18:41 (1712 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You can interpret God any way you want. I view Him as purposeful and controlling and His evolved organisms, as presented, are not capable to do their own design, in my fixed view.

dhw: I have no doubt that if he exists he is purposeful. But I do not understand why he should be limited to your interpretation of his purpose, namely to designing H. sapiens, when the history of life shows a colossal bush of other life forms. This suggests that if he had your single purpose, he was not “controlling” (i.e. he could have chosen to relinquish control - as you believe he did with human free will). And your fixed view does not mean that another view is impossible.

If God's choice of creation method is evolution, as I propose, then his purpose is obvious: a full bush of life supplying the food energy to cover the time to reach the human species. A well planned course of action.

DAVID: And you keep distorting my 'no idea' which refers only to my point that I do not know why God chose evolution in the first place over direct creation. Your continual distortion of my position will keep this thread going. I will not be misrepresented.

dhw: Evolution of what? You keep leaving out the fact that (a) your God “evolved” billions of non-human life forms etc. although his only purpose was to “evolve” H. sapiens, and you ignore the fact that preprogramming and dabbling are both forms of direct creation!

DAVID: My definition of direct creation is the Biblical story of one complete stage at a time, not a long-term evolution of forms[/i].

dhw: Your theory is not biblical Creationism, but how can precise programming and dabbling be regarded as anything but forms of direct creation?

Of course each tiny stage is a direct creation, but not the giant step creation as the Bible states. That is all I am saying.

DAVID: God chose to evolve all forms starting with bacteria, and currently ending with humans. Why is that concept so hard to accept?

dhw: It is not hard to accept. What is hard to accept is that humans were his one and only purpose, and that is why he specially designed all the other non-human life forms to eat or be eaten by one another.

You are hung up on the word' purpose'. I view humans as God's goal starting with bacteria and then evolving what He wants to create on the way to humans, knowing He needs life's energy supply must be sufficient on the way. Econiches are purposefully created. The whole process has purposes all the way. God is not a poor planner and He is patient in managing the job.

DAVID: Doesn't God have the right to choose His methodology?

dhw: Of course he does. But that does not mean that your version of his method of achieving your version of his purpose is correct. So please let us have the explanation I asked for. If it helps you, perhaps you could say: He specially designed the whale’s flipper, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that all the different life forms would eat or be eaten by one another, and if he hadn’t done so, he would not have been able to fulfil his one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens because…..

Because the food supply was absolutely necessary over the time involved. Note the econiches are exquisitely designed to maintain the balance of nature as evidence of God's planning. My view is God knew in advance how to do it over time. Your view suggests God was shortsighted, fumbling his way long.