Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Monday, August 19, 2019, 10:10 (1683 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] I think the evolution of the Earth as the perfect planet to support life, which God also controlled, reached a point of an environmental status where the Cambrian Explosion was appropriate to happen. All shown by the known history.

dhw: This is a non-explanation! You are simply saying that whatever happened - the known history – shows that God specially designed it all because that is what happened!

DAVID: It is an explanation. If God is in charge (as I believe) and chose to evolve all organisms, history does tell us what happened.

Of course history tells us what happened! And for anyone who believes in God and evolution, of course it means that God chose evolution to evolve all organisms. But that does not mean he preprogrammed or dabbled them all (see Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering” and my "cellular intelligence" for alternatives), and above all it does not explain your next comment, as repeated in my summary of your theory that follows:

DAVID: […] My God is very purposeful. He knew those designs were required interim goals to establish the necessary food supply to cover the time He knew He had decided to take.

dhw: […] You imagine him saying to himself: “My one and only purpose is to design H. sapiens. I am in full control, and I have decided not to fulfil my one and only purpose for 3.X billion years, and so I will design billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders first, so that all the life forms can eat or be eaten by one other until 3.X billion years have passed, and then I will design lots of hominins and homos before I design the only thing I want to design.”

DAVID: A total distortion of my thinking. God chose to evolve humans by choosing to evolve from bacteria to humans. Not a complex theory.

He also chose to evolve (for you = specially design) every non-human life form from bacteria. There is no distortion. You have confirmed every detail listed above! But do tell us which detail you now wish to withdraw.

dhw: […] If I believed in him, I would tend to believe that he wanted to specially design whatever he specially designed. […]

DAVID: Of course He 'wanted to design' what He knew He had to design to evolve humans. (dhw’s bold)

Dhw: […] So his decision to specially design H. sapiens by small steps forced him into specially designing 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human life forms etc. before he specially designed H. sapiens in small steps. And this is logical. […]

DAVID: Never 'forced'. All according to a plan to evolve humans from bacteria.

According to you, he HAD TO (bolded) design the whole bush of life forms in order to fulfil his plan. What sort of plan means you “have to do” anything but what you want to do? […]

DAVID: Not 'has to', chose to.

See above, plus: “Simply my God did what He had to do based on His decision of how to create by steps”. His decision to fulfil his one and only purpose of creating H. sapiens by steps meant that he “had to” create the bush of non-human life forms that preceded H. sapiens. My counter proposal is that he wanted to create a bush of life, not had to.

DAVID: My in-charge God doesn't lollygag. Your complaint about Him taken all that time is simply your lack of viewing God as I do.

dhw: Of course. I don’t see him as a bumbler who creates a system that forces him not to do the only thing he wants to do. If I believed in him, I would see him as purposeful in all that he does, and I would believe that the ever changing bush of life was what he wanted, not merely a means of filling in time until he could fulfil his one and only purpose.

DAVID: Again using your imagined humanized God to argue with my theory. Our Gods are widely different.

How on earth can you argue that a God who wants to create the bush of non-human life forms he created is more “humanized” than a God who has to create a bush of life forms in order to create the one and only life form he wants to create?

DAVID: What is illogical to me is your approach to imagining God and making Him quite human, which then you translate into I am illogical. Not at all. It is your own problem.

dhw: My attack on your logic has nothing whatsoever to do with the alternatives I offer. Your theory would be illogical even if I offered no alternatives.

DAVID: Illogical only to you as you humanize God.

As above, wanting to create a bush is no more “humanizing” than wanting to create H. sapiens but having to create a bush first. But at least it is more logical than your God devising a plan which means that for 3.X billion years he “has to” do anything but what he wants to do.


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