Purpose and design (Evolution)

by David Turell @, Sunday, April 23, 2017, 14:52 (2522 days ago) @ dhw


dhw: I will assume that you share David’s view of God as the First Cause, i.e. an eternally conscious mind. What is this mind conscious of? As First Cause it has nothing to be conscious of except itself. Frankly, what a bore! And so it decides to create something to relieve the boredom of eternal introspection: a universe containing living material beings, which it can watch develop in all kinds of unexpected ways. And if gets bored with one set of developments, it gets rid of them. What I see in “all of creation” is a continual coming and going, of stars and solar systems, of individual organisms and of species. Certainly not “wasteful” if, as you yourself have said, each of them “has served its purpose and is no longer needed”. Hence the example of the dinosaurs and Chixculub. Unlike David, you do not fight shy of attributing human qualities to your God, who you believe made us in his image. What would you yourself feel if you had nothing to do except think about yourself? (Actually, David at one point suggested that God was lonely.) Once again, I do not expect you to support this interpretation of life’s history geared to God’s purpose, but can you fault its logic?
Xxx
DAVID: I think the image is in the presence of human consciousness.
dhw: I did not imagine the image contained two eyes, two arms and two legs. However, a blank consciousness is not much of an image, is it?
DAVID: Our consciousness certainly relates to His. Obviously, neither are blank. I'm sure both are extremely active.

dhw: So what aspects of our consciousness do you think might be “related” to his?

You and I are consciously discussing God. Isn't that a relationship to Him? I have my own form of praying to Him. I get comfort from my belief in Him and the way it explains the mysteries of existence to me. As for your comments above the break, what an extreme from of humanizing God by offering to describe Him as bored. God is pure purpose, pure intent. It is not all coming and going. It is evolving processes ending in purposeful results. Once you accept purpose as primary, all of the considerations you think of as illogical fall into place.


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