The Mind of God (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, February 09, 2015, 15:06 (3575 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Larry Moran, an atheist Canadian biochemistry professor, has a blog, Sandwalk, named for a walkway on Darwin's property. He castigates atheist Stephan Fry for attempting to know the mind of God.
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2015/01/stephen-fry-blows-it-by-assuming-he.html-DAVID: On this site I have tried to toe the line of not making Fry's mistake. I try to look at evidence for God's purposes, not his personality. I reject the point that He is playful, bored or callus about suffering. I am not sure about the full extent of his powers. They may have some limits. This is why I have my dilemma about how evolution is controlled by God, which I think it is. I admit I think organism have some degree of inventive ability, based on the new epigenetic discoveries. But at the same time I look at the increasingly complex genome controls that are also being discovered, and all I can see is design. I'll stick with my dilemma approach until evolutions' mechanisms are more clearly delineated. Over-analyzing the mind of God is a mistake.-Overdoing anything is usually a mistake, but if it is right for you to speculate about God's purposes, it is right for others to challenge those speculations. It is you who refuse to wait until “evolution's mechanisms are more clearly delineated”, and who insist that God's purpose for evolution was to create humans, and that God preprogrammed the first cells with every innovation and lifestyle for the next 3.7 billion years, or gave demonstrations to the weaverbirds on how to build their nests. As for the complex genome controls, there is no reason to suppose that these are not also part of an autonomous mechanism. After all, you remain convinced that the astonishing complexities of the human brain (thank you for the latest post on the subject) serve to make us autonomous and not automatic.
 
DAVID: I feel dhw falls into Fry's trap. Just look back at his suppositions about God's point of view. He could be 'bored'. He could try 'experimenting', to paraphrase some of the discussions we've had. -These are not suppositions but hypotheses, you are paraphrasing one tiny, secondary element of our discussions, and I would hate to be bracketed with Stephen Fry! In our efforts to find coherent reasons for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution, we have each created patterns. You say God planned things to fulfil a particular purpose (humans). It seems to me just as reasonable to speculate that the operator actually aimed for higgledy-piggledy, or didn't know what he was doing, or was experimenting, as it is to speculate that his goal was humans.
 
DAVID: Please, lets quit discussions at that level and simply look at the evidence we have in front of us. I admit struggling to understand God's intentions is entering His mind, but only in one aspect. I equate what I see as the results of evolution to imply purposeful design. I do not then look for an emotional content behind those actions. I really do not know why God did what He did. I don't know how bonded He is to us, if bonded at all. We are here. There must be a cause, and perhaps a reason. There may be no reason and no emotion involved. -Thank you for an excellent summary of our situation - but the discussions between you and me have not been about whether God is bored, playful, callous, but about whether evolution fits the pattern you have imposed on it. Possible motives for a free-for-all have been incidental. On different threads and at other times there have certainly been discussions - especially with Tony - centring on the problems of evil and suffering, and the image of God that emerges from life as we see it, as well as from the bible. And why not? If we can study life in order to ascertain whether God exists, we can also study life in order to gauge the nature of the being that might have created it and us. The curiosity that motivates the one quest also motivates the other, even if we might never know the answers.