Origin of God? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 20:49 (2915 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I think your conception of a lost thread is a realization that there can be no thread that brings a conclusion. God is concealed. God requires faith. God is a solution to 'why is there anything?'. God is the center of religions which Armstrong thinks are beneficial to orderly societies. God provides the mind to supply all the planning for the complexities for fine-tuning the universe, and then planning the overwhelming complexity of the biochemistry of living matter. The Koran says look at His works: my sentence about the f-t universe and complex biochemistry does just that. It is a hodge-podge of thought that brings an overwhelming impression to me. Your mind does not work that way, part of our disconnect. You like exactitude. You say you accept how complex things are, but I don't think you see the complexity in the way I do, because I know how hard it is to create the organic processes in the practice of biochemistry. I admit I'm fuzzy thinking. So this is not criticism but an attempt at analysis of our disconnect. But let's not start a thread of self-analysis. -Thank you for this thoughtful and generally fair analysis. I agree that we can never reach a conclusion, but I'd like to defend the pursuit of “exactitudes”. Firstly, though, the “disconnect” has nothing to do with complexity, which for me suggests design, just as it does for you. The disconnect arises from the fact that for me every statement you make about God not only throws up questions you cannot answer, but also invites different conclusions (which for me are equally hard to believe). For instance, you say “God is concealed”. Question: why? (Answer: he wants us to have faith. Why? Answer: we can't read his mind.) Different conclusion: no god is there. “Why is there anything?” Answering questions: “Why is there God?” or “Why shouldn't there always have been something?” (No answer.) Different conclusion: The something that has always been there could be energy and matter. Your question: how did life and consciousness arise then? (My answer: Nobody knows. How did God and his consciousness arise? Your answer: the great philosophical cop-out of “first cause”, but of course that does NOT have to be consciousness.) Your theory that God “guided” evolution has spawned post after post of anomalies which we needn't repeat here. Ultimately, you have to fall back on the unknowable. Where does this leave you? With a God whose presence, motives, nature, methods and attributes are unknown. He might just as well be called the unknown and unknowable solution to the mystery of life. All we are then left with is that your unknown solution is intelligent, while the atheistic unknown solution is mindless. There is no more to be said unless we pursue “exactitudes”, and it is this pursuit that has driven science and philosophy for thousands of years! Long may we and our fellow humans pursue exactitudes!