Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Saturday, August 17, 2019, 11:04 (1713 days ago) @ David Turell

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

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

DAVID: 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.

You wrote: “I do not know why God chose evolution in the first place over direct creation”, and I pointed out that your interpretation of evolution (divine preprogramming and/or dabbling) is a form of direct creation. I'm now confused over whether you think evolution means tiny stages (Darwinism) or giant steps (Creationism, exemplified by the Cambrian), but the question remains as to why your God directly created every non-human life form if the only thing he wanted to directly create was H. sapiens. Here comes your answer:

dhw: 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...

DAVID: 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.

Absolutely necessary for what? Answer: He had to design the whale’s fin, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest to fill in the time before he could do the only thing he wanted to do because he knew he couldn’t do it until 3.X billion years had gone by, although he was the one who created the whole system in the first place. Why can’t you imagine your God directly designing all these life forms because he wanted to design them for their own sake and not just as a means of passing time? Or designing them because he was experimenting? Or designing a mechanism that would come up with its own variations which he could “watch with interest” (you used that expression some time ago in one of your more open-minded moments)?

I do not have “a” view of your God. I offer alternatives. However, it does seem to me that a God whose only purpose is to design one particular species and who spends 3.X billion years designing anything but that one species might be viewed as shortsighted and fumbling his way along. If I believed in him, I would tend to believe that he wanted to specially design whatever he specially designed. (And that might include an inventive mechanism to produce the great bush of non-human life forms that preceded H. sapiens.)