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> dhw: [i]You did not answer my question. People who watch sport and who watch films also do so for a purpose. And the makers of the games and the films plan for unpredictability.[/i] DAVID: [i]You keep equating God&apos;s motives or personality with human behavior. I specifically try not to do that, since we cannot know about Him except to look at what He produces. Yes, I ignored your supposition. I use inference to the best solution in logic. He produced humans against all odds of chance, therefore I interpret that result as His intent.[/i]-He also produced the monarch butterfly, the tyrannosaurus, the trilobite and the duck-billed platypus against all odds of chance. Life itself is against all odds of chance. You say God thinks like us, you insist that he had a particular purpose, but when I challenge that purpose and offer you a different one, you claim I&apos;m anthropomorphizing God!   Dhw: [i]I have no doubt that if God exists, he had a purpose in creating life. But I&apos;m not convinced that WE are that purpose, or even if we are, I don&apos;t know his purpose for creating us. .... Why do you insist that only a planned and predictable spectacle can constitute a purpose?[/i] DAVID: [i]I don&apos;t know why He created us either. But it required planning and control to do it against all odds. You also reject chance. you just can&apos;t imagine a designer so you invent unreasonable ways around one. I find a purposeful designer a reasonable result.[/i]-I invent hypotheses that are no more and no less unreasonable than yours. If I thought one hypothesis was reasonable enough to believe in, I would climb down off my picket fence!-dhw: [i]You and I reached agreement that the first cause may be energy. But why would eternal energy be conscious of itself? An evolving consciousness through the mindless transformation of energy into matter into energy is just as possible/impossible as a consciousness that has simply existed for ever[/i]. DAVID: [i]I&apos;ll accept that energy in some form or state always existed. That is a logical first cause, but to postulate that amorphous energy can somehow organize itself into conscious energy is beyond my reasoning capacity. [/i]-Mine too. And to postulate that energy was somehow organized into consciousness from no beginning is also beyond my reasoning capacity.   DAVID: [i]Therefore, I can accept only conscious energy as a first cause. Yu have rejected chance as the cause for the appearance of the universe and life, but injected it again at a prior level of development. You are not consistent. Try leaving out random chance in your thinking and see what happens.[/i]-You insist that consciousness could only have been designed, and you insist that consciousness was always there. You are not consistent. Both hypotheses are beyond anyone&apos;s reasoning capacity, and you admit as much when you acknowledge that belief in conscious first cause energy is a matter of faith. So try applying reason to your faith and see what happens.