A Sense of Free Will: the consciousness quagmire (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 19, 2015, 01:15 (3081 days ago) @ dhw


> DAVID: You wouldn't have to avoid it, if you would stay away from religious theology completely in philosophic discussion, like I do.
> 
> Once you express a belief in God, I would suggest to you that it is impossible to separate philosophical discussion from religious theology. -And what theology is that? You then bring in your version of my faith below:-> dhw Your God is within and without everything, and there is purpose in all that he does. You cannot contemplate the possibility that he didn't know what he was doing when he started the process of evolution, or that he might have left his invention to follow its own course. Why? Because you attribute a very specific plan to him: the production of humans, though you don't like us asking why he would want to create humans.-Humans are an obvious endpoint since we are the most complex, but you are right, I have no idea why He decided to make us. I'm glad He did. I see purpose in what happened, but you want me to read his mind and I can't. He won't tell me directly and I don't believe the religions' reasons because they are driven by hope and human thought, nothing else.-> dhw: You are of course free to follow or reject different concepts of God and his work as you please, but let's not pretend that your religious beliefs are “completely” separate from your philosophical discussions.-Of course I have a simple and positive religious belief, which is the religion I profess: there is a greater power that invented and runs all of this. There can be no other explanation. That is my theology. Beyond that the rest is guesswork. And I arrived at this point philosophically. I still think you are confused by your knowledge of and rejection of religion.