\"Bleached Faith\" (Religion)

by dhw, Friday, October 09, 2009, 12:52 (5319 days ago) @ David Turell

David has referred us to Gerald Schroeder's concept of God as a being that studies us, changes his approach, and occasionally steps in ... e.g. killing off the dinosaurs with an asteroid.-This is very much in line with one of my own favoured concepts. I can visualize a scientist God experimenting ... initially with the most primitive forms of life, implanting these with the mechanisms (sorry, George) for evolution, but stepping in when he feels like it in order to give the process a new twist. If you strip him of his omniscience and his omnipotence, you can create a much more convincing picture of designed evolution: God slowly working things out, until he finally (or maybe not finally) gets to us. -You say: "It gets rid of the problem of evil since we are free to be evil." But the problem is how evil could be created in the first place by a being reputed to be all-good. Humans didn't invent it, because selfishness and aggression and territoriality and bloodshed were around long before we were. So bang go omniscience, omnipotence AND omnigoodness. As I keep saying, the design usually reflects the designer, and if there is a God, this more "human" concept seems to me to fit the facts more comfortably than the conventional one.