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

by dhw, Saturday, June 29, 2013, 08:47 (4164 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You persist in missing my point. I don't need to imagine any other universes to support my theism. I only know this universe and what it shows me. Atheists have conjured up multiverses (with absolutely no way of proving them) to support their atheism theory.-Your last sentence is the point at issue, and is the subject of "Dennis Prager on multiverses" (your post of 18 June at 16.07) which triggered this discussion: 
 
http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2013/06/18/why-some-scientists-embrace-the-...-When I asked whether your God might not have created universes prior to this one, you answered: "we can suppose an infinite number of universes in past eternity." An infinite number of universes in the present and an infinite number of universes in the past makes little mathematical difference! The point which "you persist in missing" is that if you can suppose an infinite number of universes, it is illogical for you then to dismiss the very same concept as poppycock just because atheists need it for their own theory. If it is plausible for you, it has to be plausible for them.-dhw: 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.
 
DAVID: I fully understand your position. It is an unwillingness to think outside your box. Reminds me of Schroedinger's cat.-I see it rather differently. By accepting the possibility of all three hypotheses, while not being hemmed in by any, I see myself as willing to think three ways (see below), whereas theists and atheists have dived into their box and closed the lid. 
 
dhw: 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.-DAVID: I know the quote well. Loved to read about Holmes as a child. Are all three options equally improbable in your mind?-That is a very difficult question, which has forced me into a lengthy session of introspection! The short answer is yes. But it's a complicated yes. If I could focus solely on your unanswerable design argument, I would have to acknowledge that a designer is the least improbable. If I could focus solely on eternity, infinity, the impersonality and randomness of the universe as I see it, atheistic chance would win. If I could focus solely on the meeting of individual minds through discussion, literature, music, on individual psychic experiences, and on the vast range of individual intelligences throughout the human, animal and plant kingdoms, my relatively new (to me) atheistic panpsychist hypothesis would seem the least improbable. However, each hypothesis impinges on the others, and they are always in conflict. I simply do not have the wherewithal to grasp the whole and make sense of it. No-one has. That is why you need faith to jump into your box!