Concepts of God: how I think about God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, April 07, 2016, 12:47 (3151 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So a whatever-it-is hides and keeps shtoom, and we ‘respond' to the hidden whatever-it-is's shtoomness. As BBella puts it so aptly: “...doesn't a relationship at least take two?”
DAVID: For the uninitiated shtoom is Yiddish for silent. Can we learn more about God if we use Yiddish words?-I'm afraid that doesn't answer BBella's question.-DAVID (to BBella): The voyeur part of dhw's proposal just having entertainment watching us is out and out wrong. 
dhw: Just as you once dismissed the findings of eminent scientists concerning cellular intelligence as “absolutely wrong”, you now dismiss a hypothesis about God's unknowable nature as “out and out wrong”, which can only mean you profess to have inside knowledge of the truth. 
DAVID: I look at the available evidence from God's works to arrive at my conclusions, and I see purpose everywhere, because I look for it. Circular I admit, but productive.-An admirably honest assessment of your own thought processes, but that does not give you the right to dismiss other ideas as “out and out wrong”. And although it was you who used the term “voyeur”, I still don't know why it can't be applied to someone who according to you is intensely interested but keeps himself concealed.
 
DAVID: Let's look at an interesting scientific study on algae that produce hydrocarbons. 
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-enzyme-discovery-scientists-path-oil.html
Comment: ...We, not God, yes, we are using the fuel supplied by the algae, but why shouldn't we look at the algae as supplied by God. I have a different frame of reference that the researchers and BBella and you. This is the way I came to a belief in God.-And your theistic frame of reference enables you to see purpose because you look for it. I don't have a problem with that. Once a basic premise is established, it is very easy to find what you look for. Atheists do the same. My objection is to your “out and out wrong”, because I don't like to see you using the same intolerantly irrational level of argument as the fundamentalists of all creeds. -Dhw (in response to BBella): This is a very complex concept: God (a being with the power to create) would presumably have created life in the first place, but then decided to experience it in all its aspects by giving up his own identity and becoming all living things.
DAVID: In my view God's identity is not given up. BBella is right on. God is in each of us, but we are not allowed to recognize that by a direct stimulation. That recognition requires thought and reflection by studying God's works for us (teleology). Thus panentheism is a logical conclusion or me by looking for teleology everywhere.-Once you have fixed the basic premise, the rest follows on naturally, as above. But see below on the problem of teleology.-dhw: But if he has no identity and IS all living things, he no longer exists as a separate being. He has become ALL THAT IS, in all its diversity. Is this right? It's certainly an intriguing idea, and would explain his absence and the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution, as well as putting paid to David's various evolutionary and teleological hypotheses.
David: Doesn't change my approach. You don't think in teleological terms at all.
-Not so. I try to consider all possibilities, and if God exists, I would very much like to know his purpose in creating life. The hypothesis that he did so in order to relieve his eternal boredom is teleological. It is a hypothesis, not a belief, but in all honesty I must say I find it more rational than the hypothesis that he wants a relationship with us and yet conceals himself from us. -DAVID: "Concept of God" is for me a strange way of approaching God. Very analytic but is it a search for evidence? I don't think so.-It is perfectly possible to consider the evidence for and against the existence of God and at the same time to hypothesize about his nature (if he exists) by studying what he has created. You have drawn one conclusion from such studies; others may draw different conclusions.