Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 14, 2021, 18:45 (1167 days ago) @ dhw

Spiders lasso

DAVID: The purpose is production of humans, as previously stated. My view of God is that He is too purposeful to create something for His own self-interest. Do you think He gets bored?

dhw: I have asked why he created life including humans, and you keep chickening out of answering. I don’t know why you regard the creation of something interesting as not being purposeful.

God does not need anything to interest Him. He does not tell us why He created life, and religions are full of guesswork.

Fin to limb genes

DAVID: You forget or ignore our evolution is one continuing process from simple to complex.

dhw: That does not mean it is one continuing process from bacteria to H. sapiens! It is one continuing process which according to you has encompassed the direct design of millions of extinct life forms that had no connection with humans, though you insist that the only purpose of all those extinct life forms was to enable your God to design humans.

I think God could have designed humans without the bush, but what we would we eat? Therefore He evolved a huge bush.

EGNOR ON FREE WILL

DAVID: I needed your repetition to properly answer point for point. The 'beyond our control' is totally fallacious. I have full right to chose among the influences in my past and discard them. Raised liberal I am now a very conservative libertarian. You are correct, free will involves what you make yourself free from, and environment, chance events, previous easily discarded upbringing never should influence an individual decision in that moment of thought. Freedom from most of the past in very possible.

dhw: I don’t know why you left out the last sentence of my answer: ”The argument in defence of the concept is that all the influences combine to make the unique person that is me, and nobody else takes my decisions.” My point was that Egnor made no mention of this all-important aspect of the subject.

My answer above is in full support of that approach you cited. I'm with Egnor.

Highest speed claw snapping

dhw: Do you think an unknown, sourceless, intelligent being created a special programme for claw-snapping 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to perform a claw-snapping operation on a few pre-claw-snappers, and did so as part of his goal to evolve humans and their food supply?

DAVID: You know my expected answer. God is the designer of life and evolution. History is a clear picture of how He did it by design.

dhw: You have only offered us two forms of design, so please tell us: do you think he designed claw-snapping 3.8 billion years ago, or stepped in to perform an operation? And do you think claw-snapping was part of his goal to evolve humans and their food supply?

I've told you over and over I don't know which mechanism God used for each and every design, but I have shown in recent entries the strong evidence of pre-planning in antecedent DNAs.