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

by dhw, Thursday, November 19, 2015, 20:09 (3078 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You wouldn't have to avoid it, if you would stay away from religious theology completely in philosophic discussion, like I do.
Dhw: Once you express a belief in God, I would suggest to you that it is impossible to separate philosophical discussion from religious theology. -David: 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.-Is there any inaccuracy in my “version” of your faith? -DAVID: 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.-Your insistence that humans were your God's purpose, that the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution somehow fits in with such a purpose, and that he would not have started the process without knowing where it was leading, is already a reading of God's mind. Unless you reject my “version” of your faith as outlined above, it is your theology. Your rejection of established religions is also part of your theology.
 
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.-DAVID: 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.-Your philosophical discussions (including a very precise interpretation of theistic evolution) are based on your theology, which you arrived at through your philosophy! So how can you claim that you stay away from religious theology in philosophical discussion? And indeed why should you? It seems to me to be perfectly normal that your theology should permeate your philosophy. And perfectly normal that I should question both, just as you question the theological speculations that permeate my philosophy.