than God intended

[navi tasan]

Are these sentences both correct:

1) He will be better than God intended him to be.

2) He will be better than God intended.

I think they are both grammatical. '2' is shorter, but '1' sounds more natural to me. It is clearer.

Gratefully,
Navi.

 

[Skrej]

Yes, they're grammatically correct, although without some more context I'm not exactly sure what they're supposed to mean.

 

[Tdol]

I am not sure how theologically sound they are.

 

[Raymott]

Perhaps he's being tempted to consort with the devil, and this is a promise.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much,

He will have his genes replaced with better ones and will have microchips placed in his brain and... One could say he will be some kind of new Frankenstein...

In a manner of speaking, he will be better than God intended him to be. One could take 'God' to mean 'nature'.

Respectfully,
Navi.

 

[Matthew Wai]

I think he will be better than he was born to be.

 

[Tdol]

That sounds more like an improvement on God's work/handiwork than his intentions to me. After all, if God is omniscient, wouldn't he know that the chip would be implanted? If you want to restrict the meaning to nature, I would take God out of the sentence.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much.

You are right Tdol. The whole idea was a bit off.

Respectfully,
Navi.

 

[Tdol]

The whole idea was a bit off.

Non-believer scientists like Einstein and Hawkins have used the God analogy, so you're in good company.

 

[navi tasan]

Good thing you mentioned Hawkins. I'm supposed to give him a phone call tomorrow, and I had forgotten that completely.

Gratefully,
Navi.

 

[emsr2d2]

Do you both mean "Hawking" or is there a non-believer scientist called Hawkins who I'm not aware of? There's Dawkins, of course, but he's not a scientist, just an atheist.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you very much, Emsr2d2,

We were talking about Hawking, or maybe a combination of Hawking and Dawkins. As far as I know, Dawkins is a scientist and has worked on evolutionary biology. I am not capable of assessing his contributions.

In any case, I guess Tdol made a typo and I just followed him blindly!

Respectfully,
Navi.

 

[Raymott]

There's Dawkins, of course, but he's not a scientist, just an atheist.

Dawkins, assuming you mean Richard, is/was one of the foremost evolutionary biologists in the world.

"He remained at Oxford, earning his master’s and doctorate degrees in zoology in 1966 under famed ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. Dawkins assisted Tinbergen before becoming an assistant professor of zoology (1967–69) at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned to Oxford to lecture in zoology in 1970."
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Dawkins