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

by dhw, Friday, June 28, 2013, 12:23 (4165 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: On 21 June you wrote: "I think we can suppose an infinite number of universes in past eternity if we presume first cause is eternal" [which you do]. Atheists "know" that non-conscious eternal energy produced this one, therefore that may be what eternal energy does, one after another. Why is it plausible for a theist to "suppose" an infinite number of universes, but poppycock for an atheist?-DAVID: I 'supposed' it to answer your question of what God did all those eons before the Big Bang. I don't know what He did, and it doesn't matter to my personal theology. I only know this universe and don't need a multiverse, as the atheists do to support their position.-I asked the question because you dismissed the atheist idea of other universes as a poppycock device to avoid design. If the theory of other universes is plausible for you as a theist, because something must have preceded the Big Bang, you should grant that it is plausible for an atheist because something must have preceded the Big Bang. The fact that you don't need this plausible theory because you believe in God anyway is hardly a reason for dismissing the same plausible theory just because atheists need it!-dhw: From my padded fence I do not believe in chance, in God, or in my panpsychist hypothesis (whether theistic or atheistic). But I realize that one of them must be closer to the truth than the others, and so I do not disbelieve or "reject" any of them. Not believing is not the same as rejecting ... a distinction many theists and atheists seem to have difficulty understanding. -DAVID: Your disbelief is rational for you. I believe that two of your proposals require chance: chance itself and panpsychism as you describe it evolves on its own by chance. That leaves God and you find it rational to not accept that third choice.-It is not disbelief, and you have still not understood the distinction between disbelief and not believing. Theists and atheists disbelieve: you reject chance, and they reject God. I accept the possibility of chance, and I accept the possibility of God, and I accept the possibility of consciousness evolving. Why? Because I cannot think of any other explanation. But each of them has a starting point that is so unlikely that I cannot choose any of them. In The Sign of Four, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes sums it up beautifully: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" You and atheists are satisfied that you have distinguished between the impossible and the improbable, and you have come to diametrically opposite conclusions. I have not been able to make the distinction. For me, all three options remain improbable but not impossible.