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> > dhw: You obviously meant “[i]in[/i] total control”, but as I say, theodicy – just like design – was never an issue between us. My hypothesis of what you call “freewheeling” offers a perfectly rational explanation of “evil”. However, this was a digression from the issue of your refusal to tell me why you reject the possibility that God gave organisms the autonomous power to organize themselves, i.e. WANTED to sacrifice full control.
> > 
> > DAVID: [i]I have never thought He was not in full control. My statement of viruses as a 'side effect' certainly suggests the option that His control was not complete, but that has two interpretations: He did mean to lose total control or He didn't mean it. On balance He demonstrates extraordinary purpose which still support full control.[/i]
> > 
> > dhw: Your original “non-religious thought”, quoted above, was that you had no way of knowing whether your God was in full control. Thank you for now acknowledging the equal possibility that he WANTED to lose control. That is just as purposeful as the deliberate or accidental creation of bad viruses, but the purpose of course would not be the targeted production of the sapiens brain. It would be the ever varying spectacle of the evolutionary bush, with organisms coming and going as they autonomously attempt to work out their own ways of coping with changing conditions. (Your God could, of course, dabble if he wanted to.) And I still don’t know why you are so resolutely opposed to this hypothesis, which fits in perfectly with the history of evolution as we know it.
> 
> You and I differ on the degree of God's purposefulness. God created the universe and evolved it. God created  the Earth as a perfect planet for life to appear, and evolved it. And finally He evolved the human brain. A clear succession of purpose and result.