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> > dhw: I&apos;m a little surprised to hear that in contrast to your earlier refusal to anthropomorphise him, you now have him proudly enjoying the entertainment. Apart from pride, I wonder what other human emotions you&apos;ll allow him to feel as he gazes at the astonishingly rich, beautiful, kindly, cruel, destructive and selfish products of his invention.-I&apos;ve allowed myself a little latitude in my just-so story abuot God&apos;s thinking. I have no idea if I am anywhere near correct. >   > dhw: Be that as it may, I like your latest scenario, because it&apos;s clear that since God&apos;s purpose was "[i]inventive life[/i]", he left the course of evolution in the "hands" of his intelligent invention ... apparently preprogrammed to experiment and take its own decisions (much like us humans, then!). In other words, he did not preprogramme "[i]by-products[/i]" like flycatchers, trilobites, dinosaurs, dodos or duck-billed platypuses, but sat back watching while the intelligent genome produced its own inventions, some of which survived, and some of which perished. -A good synopsis of my view of evolution.- -> dhw:Why he should have predicted the eventual arrival of humans is not at all clear from your just-so story. Perhaps he used Dawkins-like reasoning: given enough combinations, eventually you are bound to come up with the right one. Alternatively, since we are now playing the game of reading God&apos;s mind, he hadn&apos;t got a clue where it would lead (after all, who likes a show with a predictable outcome?), and so like flycatchers, humans were a "[i]by-product[/i]" ... though no doubt providing the best entertainment of all. [b]What is clear from the above is that humans were not planned either.[/b] This scenario fits in well with evolution&apos;s higgledy-piggledy bush, and of all the God hypotheses, it seems to me the most plausible.-The material I have read about human development makes it look &apos;favored&apos;. The primates we sprung from, for seemingly no good reason, are still happily doing their thing (not with the poaching), and we have advanced way beyond them, a la&apos; Adler, [i]The Difference in Kind and the Difference it Makes,[/i] a  strong suggestion of a favored outcome. Here my scenario implies a desired result, despite the bush of life; and a very interesting bush of inventions at that, as I show in the Natures Wonders thread. But there is nothing like us but us!