particles and connections (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 12:00 (2838 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Of course we can discuss how we relate to God, and wonder how He relates to us. You are taking my approach to a silly extreme, which is fair enough in any debate.
dhw: I don’t know why it’s “silly” - though it’s certainly fair enough - to question how a relationship can be possible without contact and without common ground. If you can’t answer, then perhaps you should face up to the possibility that there may be something wrong with your approach (e.g. perhaps God has actually endowed us with some of his own traits).
DAVID: He may have. My point is we cannot know that, so why presume it. I don't think discussing it adds anything to our knowledge. I think God can have goals or purposes without self-gratification.

It is not a presumption, and you may well say that discussing the unknowable adds nothing to our knowledge since it is impossible to “know” whether God exists, and if he does exist, what are his purposes and his nature. The same applies to the origin of life and to what happened before the Big Bang (if it happened). All we have are theories based on our inadequate “knowledge” of all that is. But you have your beliefs, and have written two brilliant books to explain them, so I’m afraid your dismissal of any theories that contradict your own because they do not “add anything to our knowledge” rings a little hollow. You are just as much an explorer of the unknowable as I am.

DAVID: Your 'weapons of mass destruction' are Earth's requirements for life. It suggests God could not make the Earth in any other way. Perhaps He has limits. Your humanizing approach limits you vision of what actual capacities a creator God might have. We can only work with what we actually know of our reality.
dhw: Please reread what you have written. First you say that perhaps he has limits (he had to use weapons of mass destruction to create life), and then you tell me that it’s MY approach that imposes limits on him! It’s YOUR approach that imposes the limits. I merely wonder why a God with limitless powers couldn’t find a less destructive way to create life.
DAVID: You are again making religious assumptions about the description of God's powers. I've said he probably had to make Earth this way. His powers may be limited.

I make no assumptions. I simply object when you tell me that my approach limits my vision of what capacities God might have when your own approach suggests explicitly that his powers might be limited.