You cannot give up trying to score a point with this argument.

Of course it is a very long list. It can go along with:
-identify integers a and b such that a/b = sqrt(2) or
-identify real numbers x and y such that x+y is complex, etc.

So?

The is no so. I was just joking around.

Ah yes, the smiley face. Sorry then. Sometimes I am too serious.

Super easy, even I can do this. It works for all real numbers.

Oops, you got me. I thought that a complex number had to have a non-zero imaginary component. Oh well, you know what I meant.

I wouldnt want to speak for Jibninjas, but I certainly had a similar view to this (and to RLK's view, I suspect). Insert the usual 'speculation caveat' here, but my guess used to be something along the following lines:

"I think a certain level of brainpower is necessary in order to have a mind. So i think the creation of a living, breathing, thinking and morally aware creature requires both a material and spiritual component. As such, given God's rather clever invention of evolution, it took some time for the physical factors to come together. Once they did - it was possible to host a soul. At that point, due to God's mysterious abilities, souls were wedded to bodies. He couldnt have done it any earlier - same as he couldnt draw a square circle (or construct complex numbers with non-zero imaginary components by the addition of complex numbers with zero imaginary components.. )"

My current position isnt much different except I dont think the wedding of bodies to souls is an act of God, but rather a mysterious fact about the world. It may have been simpler for consciousness to have existed since the big bang, but I think some level of brainpower is necessary for consciousness - hence the delay in it arising isnt particularly surprising (even if I have no clue how it does arise - I'm pretty firmly of the view that a brain-equivalent is a necessary condition).

My problem is not with the delay or why God didn't do it earlier. Im fine with humans not having the right brain for one until they got one. My thing is why did he need to create a soul when humans were ready for one instead of them coming about naturally without the need for him to get involved again. Or why wasn't the soul wedded to bodies automatically when humans were ready?

I must be wording things really bad because no one seems to understand what im saying.

god is not very high tech. he likes to do things the old fashioned clumsy way.

take the flood for instance. doubt he could have come up with a more tedious way to wipe out earth's creatures.

Yeah i always wonder on that one too. Why not just genie blink the heathens out of existence. Much nicer then drowning and he could of even put in some type of evil index to automatically do it.

Nah. I get what you're saying I think, I'm just not explaining very well why my 'theory' addressed it.

I was probably never in the souls-are-injected camp anyway, so much as the souls-arose-through-the-will-of-god-which-worked-in-a-mysterious-way-as-it-does-with-the-other-things-he's-caused-to-occur camp.

Yeah, but then why not just do it properly to begin with and not have to fix anything at all? You know, that whole omni-competent thing.

That could fit them arising as apart of the natural or physical couldn't it?

If not mysterious ways was never very satisfying. I would still need to ask God the whys and hows. And his cant answer would feel better then its mysterious.
Well...im just ignoring that part.

Yeah, sure. As a theist I never claimed any special explanatory power. "It just is" is just as good as "God did it" in my view.
Leaving aside the fact that the reasons behind God being unable to do something would themselves be a mystery. I think the world is mysterious and we should embrace that, not operate on the assumption that we'll be able to solve the puzzle just because it would make us feel better. We have an expectation of being able to figure it out, but I think we should recognise that as a psychological leaning and nothing more. There isnt actually any reason to expect that we'll know the answers to questions we ask.

In my opinion, part of the attraction of theism is that it appears to provide an answer even when it actually doesnt. It just shifts the mystery from "We dont know how or why that is how things are" to "God did it, and we can't know God's mind".

Well i like mystery as much as the next guy. One of the beautiful things about atheism to me is giving up the answers and getting mystery. But im still a curious kind of fellow. Especially now that i dont have answers and am left with questions.

So if i met God and he said he injected or created the soul when humans were ready. I would ask why not do it naturally or as a part of evolution. If no one else would ask or think of asking that. Thats fine. But it would be on my mind.

It's like none of this makes sense when you look at it carefully!

He found this to be a convenient way to get rid of the glaciers from the last ice age?