Concepts of God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Wednesday, April 06, 2016, 15:42 (2935 days ago)

We have left bacterial motors far behind, and so I am switching this discussion to a new thread.
 
DAVID (under "Bacterial motors"): I feel He wanted to create a thinking being to respond to Him, which we have done. We think like He does, only to a much less degree. Remember we are made in His image, at the mental level.
dhw: I don't have a problem with that, except that I'm not sure what you mean by “respond to him” […] -DAVID: I meant 'response' in the sense that humans setup religions. 
and
DAVID: (to BBella: God created us for a relationship, but He chooses to remain concealed so as to require faith.-So a whatever-it-is hides and keeps shtoom, and we ‘respond' to the hidden whatever-it-is's shtoomness. As BBella puts it so aptly: “...doesn't a relationship at least take two?”-DAVID (to BBella): The voyeur part of dhw's proposal just having entertainment watching us is out and out wrong. -Just as you once dismissed the findings of eminent scientists concerning cellular intelligence as “absolutely wrong”, you now dismiss a hypothesis about God's unknowable nature as “out and out wrong”, which can only mean you profess to have inside knowledge of the truth. Come on, let's have some humility. Besides, if as you say he has an “intense continuous interest” but “chooses to remain concealed”, what the heck can he do except be a “voyeur”? -BBELLA: On the other hand, putting myself into the place of ONE such eternal being with all power to create - instead of creating life, and becoming a watcher and a fiddler of it - I would become life itself. Become it in such a multitude of ways as to experience any and every possible way of being and experience it all fully. But the only way to do that, to truly experience ALL things exclusively as one thing, I would have to close the door to the true knowledge of who - I AM. -This is a very complex concept: God (a being with the power to create) would presumably have created life in the first place, but then decided to experience it in all its aspects by giving up his own identity and becoming all living things. But if he has no identity and IS all living things, he no longer exists as a separate being. He has become ALL THAT IS, in all its diversity. Is this right? It's certainly an intriguing idea, and would explain his absence and the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution, as well as putting paid to David's various evolutionary and teleological hypotheses. In fact, if it weren't for the difficulty of believing that life came about by chance, we could dispense with the concept of God altogether, which perhaps is what you are getting at? On the other hand, putting myself in his place (if he exists), I'm not so sure that I would want to give up my identity!