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> DAVID:  ;-)  [i]I'm doing everything I can with the facts I present to knock you off your favorite fence. I'm not illogical. Add God and it all works.[/i]
> dhw: [i]I am aware of what you are trying to do, and I appreciate our discussions more than I can ever say. However, you won’t knock me off my fence by kidding yourself that a hypothesis which allows for God is designed to avoid God. And to achieve your admirable purpose, you will need to present a more reasonable alternative to the theistic form of my hypothesis (God set it all in motion, then sat back to watch, though perhaps with an occasional dabble) than God only wanted humans and we don’t know why he specially designed the whale, the weaverbird’s nest and the monarch butterfly’s lifestyle in order to achieve his one and only purpose.[/i]
> DAVID: [i]My reasonable hypothesis is that God exists and is purposeful[/i].
> 
> As an agnostic, I can understand very well why you think this is a reasonable hypothesis. Our debate here concerns the nature of his purpose.
> 
> DAVID: [i]He might be a deistic God as you describe, but I prefer to think of Him as a theistic God, fully engaged with purpose and using evolution by actively speciating forms until He got to humans. There will be no more appearances of very unique species, just adaptation and minor modifications like the human brain being slightly smaller.[/i]
> 
> I know you prefer to stick to your dogma, and I accept that human consciousness makes us a very special species, but the idea that the WHOLE of evolution – every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct – was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, apart from the odd dabble, and this was done for the sole purpose of producing humans, is what I find unreasonable.