God and Reality (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Sunday, June 23, 2013, 22:47 (4169 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The object of my reference to earlier universes was to point out the illogicality of the claim that atheists only propose other universes in order to avoid the design theory, although you as a design theorist accept that there must have been other universes!-DAVID: The atheist position is to have a never-ending cycle of multiverses, always existing and popping in and out of existence like a mass of eternal soap bubbles. Gets rid of the Big Bang, gets rid of a designer universe concept, and trades fantasy for what we observe: an apparent creation of a universe which was designed to allow for life. Next step in my thought process: we can only suppose to extrapolate what we know. If God did this and is eternal, then He has done it over and over.-Forget multiverses. My atheist scenario begins with the same fantasy as yours: an endless succession of universes throughout eternity. But instead of being created by a fantastic, conscious, first-cause energy in order to produce humans, they have been created by a fantastic, non-conscious, first-cause energy, and at least one out of an infinite number of them has produced life. Both fantasies offer fantastic explanations of what we observe, and they demonstrate how illogical it is to claim that atheists propose other universes in order to avoid the design theory, although you as a theist also believe that there must have been other universes!-dhw: I really don't know why you assume that each universe would have been designed to produce humans. We have no idea what other forms of life could have been produced, either by God, or by an infinite number of chance combinations, or by energy evolving awareness within different forms of changing matter.-DAVID: Could He have tried other things. Sure, but we have no evidence as to what. You don't believe in God, but you want to imagine how adept He is?-I don't disbelieve in God, and if you can fantasize about his motives (to produce humans and test their faith) and his tough love, I can fantasize too, though here I've merely said we have no idea what other forms of life there might have been. In any case, we have no evidence for ANY of the above hypotheses. All we know is that we're here in a universe that has engendered life. The rest is fantasy. But in fairness to theists and atheists alike, fantasy need not mean falsehood, and one of them has to come close to the truth!-dhw: I can't follow this. I did not invent panpsychism. The version that I have proposed suggests that energy evolved some sort of awareness within changing matter.
 
DAVID: Exactly!!! You invented a way to put intelligence into matter, when none had prior existence. True pansychism leads to my theory of panentheism, God is everywhere and part of everything from the beginning as matter appeared.-Giving it a name (God) doesn't explain where intelligence came from, or how it got into matter. It merely envelops the mystery of known intelligence in an even greater mystery of unknown intelligence. As for panpsychism, I did not invent it, and the expression "true panpsychism" is meaningless. Nobody knows the truth.