Why would an intelligent designer use mass extinctions?

If for the moment we suspend questions of whether it's reasonable to presume an intelligent designer at all, I don't see this as such a problem. Theists tend to give their gods all sorts of nice attributes, but nothing in the basic idea of intelligent design says that the intelligence is benevolent, economical, nice, or has goals that in any way duplicate our own.

Imagine that there was a god. Perfection is dull, predictable, immobile. Why would a god create a universe at all except for the fun of imperfection and disaster. Think of the universe as a bored god's electric train set. Intelligent design abounds, but if the purpose of the universe is amusement, expect some derailments and bloody crossings.
 
Why do whole teams of people spend hours painstakingly setting up intricate patterns of dominos in their high school gymnasium?

For the sheer joy of watching the little buggers fall.
 
Why would an intelligent designer use mass extinctions?
Genesis 6:12 :)
 
TimCallahan said:
<polite snip> I'm interested in hearing from any believers - Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other - as to how mass extinctions fit into their idea of an intelligent designer. Is this designer capricious? Does he get bored over the eons and change his mind a lot? If the designer is not capricious, how does one explain mass extinctions?
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I'm sure they will be able to make up some psuedo-historical mystic guff to fit the reality of evolution.
 
If you have intelligent design, that doesn't necessarily mean VERY intelligent.....

"Oops! Damn....Didn't want to do that....Here, let's wipe that out and start over...."

Let's face it... If there was intelligent design it's pretty obvious there were problems in the R&D area.
 
bruto said:
If for the moment we suspend questions of whether it's reasonable to presume an intelligent designer at all, I don't see this as such a problem. Theists tend to give their gods all sorts of nice attributes, but nothing in the basic idea of intelligent design says that the intelligence is benevolent, economical, nice, or has goals that in any way duplicate our own.

Imagine that there was a god. Perfection is dull, predictable, immobile. Why would a god create a universe at all except for the fun of imperfection and disaster. Think of the universe as a bored god's electric train set. Intelligent design abounds, but if the purpose of the universe is amusement, expect some derailments and bloody crossings.
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This is acceptable metaphor. The human form is adequate but does not necessarily work well for the consciousness within it, which essentially is this 'god' - the body does not easily 'take' to the consciousness and can have a mind of its own so to speak.

There may even be more to it than simply relieving ennui and general thrill seeking. There may be some purpose unknown and unimaginable in relation to the 'ego' of the form.
 
Bikewer said:
If you have intelligent design, that doesn't necessarily mean VERY intelligent.....

"Oops! Damn....Didn't want to do that....Here, let's wipe that out and start over...."

Let's face it... If there was intelligent design it's pretty obvious there were problems in the R&D area.
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It could be that each period between extinctions is planned that way - as necessary part of the whole unfolding thing.

We 'see' (and thus react to) a mistake where none actually is.
 
Navigator said:
There is some cherry picking perhaps going on in this answer Brian-M.

The impression I get from the story is that this far-seeing god was sorry for creating such a particular form because consciousness was not so easily directed/controllable within the form - it had too much independence and was too self centered to see its connection to the whole process and as such - on global scales could make a whole mess of things.

I get the impression that the character (god) made a mistake and tried to rectify that by washing it away. More like a scientist who creates a monster and then decides the extreme thing to do to kill that monster even if the whole 'town' must be destroyed as a consequence.
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You're talking about the Fludde as though it actually occurred.
Why not discuss actual extinction events, such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event WP?
 
TimCallahan said:
A theistic evolutionist would likely argue that God had us in mind when He started the evolutionary ball rolling. Logically, then, the dominance of the synapsids, the mammal-like reptiles, in the Permian should have led directly into the age of mammals and the evolution of intelligent mammals, like us... This all seems rather haphazard and chaotic.
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It may seem haphazard and chaotic, but if God had taken an evolutionary 'shortcut' to produce Man, would we have turned out the same? I would bet not, in which case the convoluted path He took may have been required if He had 'us' in mind.

Is this designer capricious? Does he get bored over the eons and change his mind a lot?
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According to the Bible, God is capricious and changes His mind a lot.
 
pakeha said:
You're talking about the Fludde as though it actually occurred.
Why not discuss actual extinction events, such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event WP?
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Relax.

I am speaking with metaphor.

Extinction of form which I am referring to isn't really the 'flood' any more than the god idea I am speaking of need be that of the bible.
He was just mentioned earlier on in the thread and I went with that in answering the post.
 
-Maybe the "designer" had no clue what he was doing and changed his mind a lot along the way? The ramifications to religion, here, is immense! Perhaps gods are actually a lot more like us than we ever realized.

-or gods don't exist, of course.

I will freely admit that humans seem to have a predisposition to believe in some ultimate authority figure/controller, and won't deny that side of my own character, But I tend to lean toward statement #2 most of the time, despite freely contemplating other possibilities. I think I lean more toward Zeus than Christ/Yaweh if I have to pick a theistic religion. Timeless and perfect gods who always know the future just don't make any sense at all to me -- much less sense than the notion of a god in and of itself.
 
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bruto said:
If for the moment we suspend questions of whether it's reasonable to presume an intelligent designer at all, I don't see this as such a problem. Theists tend to give their gods all sorts of nice attributes, but nothing in the basic idea of intelligent design says that the intelligence is benevolent, economical, nice, or has goals that in any way duplicate our own.

Imagine that there was a god. Perfection is dull, predictable, immobile. Why would a god create a universe at all except for the fun of imperfection and disaster. Think of the universe as a bored god's electric train set. Intelligent design abounds, but if the purpose of the universe is amusement, expect some derailments and bloody crossings.
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So, you don't think a omnipotent creator could find a way to make perfection interesting? If so, then it's not omnipotent.
 
Gawdzilla said:
So, you don't think a omnipotent creator could find a way to make perfection interesting? If so, then it's not omnipotent.
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Or not perfect. Or neither.

Of course we presume here that "omnipotent" means having all the power that there is, not necessarily all the power that one could imagine, including the power to be contradictory. But if that power is not complete, how can it be perfect?

Here of course you get into one of the basic problems that leads to the conclusion that there is no god, or at the very least that there is no god that resembles what people assume the word means. A perfect being cannot be imperfect. Unless we fuss with the definition of perfection, we must assume that perfection once achieved leaves little if any room for change. I suppose that if you wanted to fool around with it you could find "perfections" that are equal and incompatible between which one could shuttle, but incompatibility is an imperfection, isn't it? The rational conclusion is, of course, that perfection is not achievable, making a perfect god oxymoronic. One can come close to resolving this (assuming that we skate over some very thin conceptual ice) by assuming that a perfect being creates an imperfect universe for behe adventure of it. Of course, as noted, if there's a good reason to consider imperfection and variety as good and worthwhile, then how can a perfect being lack that?

The more you try to make sense of it the less sense it makes. But I'm sure you already noticed that!
 
Manopolus said:
-Maybe the "designer" had no clue what he was doing and changed his mind a lot along the way? The ramifications to religion, here, is immense! Perhaps gods are actually a lot more like us than we ever realized.
-or gods don't exist, of course.

I will freely admit that humans seem to have a predisposition to believe in some ultimate authority figure/controller, and won't deny that side of my own character, But I tend to lean toward statement #2 most of the time, despite freely contemplating other possibilities. I think I lean more toward Zeus than Christ/Yaweh if I have to pick a theistic religion. Timeless and perfect gods who always know the future just don't make any sense at all to me -- much less sense than the notion of a god in and of itself.
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Yes, a less than perfect God - who would, as several posters have noted, fit the actions of Yahweh in the OT - would fit as a creator who might, from time to time, resort to mass extinctions.

In a way this fits with reconciling the social Darwinist dictum of "survival of the fittest" with the real world: Many times its not so much survival of the fittest as it is survival of the most adequate or even survival of the least inadequate. This BTW would explain T. rex's tiny arms: They weren't a special adaptation for some esoteric use. They were, in fact, a maladaption. However, when taken with that head full of nasty fangs and those powerful claw-footed legs, it wasn't that big a drawback.
 
pakeha said:
Ahh.
What's your god idea, then?
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In relation to the thread OP and with the bible god also in focus, and in relation to other ideas people have expressed outside of general accepted beliefs about what 'god' [organised religions] is I lean toward the idea that it is essentially Consciousness, has always existed outside of any restrictive form, is essentially 'who we are/what we derive from as conscious beings' cannot be expressed by anything other than metaphor, is not 'he' or 'she' may seem to be omnipresent due to it being connected to every aspect of consciousness within the universe (not excluding the possibility of other universes) has a particular use for this physical universe, is neither 'good' or 'evil' the way we measure such things and is evolving through multi-simulations (see Tom Campbell for more on this) and is inseparable from you and I.
 
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