Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 18:52 (5490 days ago) @ dhw

"Life by accident or design? Your basic response seems to be that you don't know. A good agnostic position!"-What I don't know is whether the fundamentals in any particular universe have the potential to evolve into life. In any particular universe, I don't know whether it is possible for fundamentals to arise out of God that produce a universe that fizzles out so fast that evolution doesn't have time to produce life, or that expands so rapidly that the development of stars and stony planets never get a chance to form.-"However, your statement that it has nothing to do with theology is another Parisian surprise."-Theologians can claim that any statement whatsoever is theological. All I'm pointing out is that if the fundamentals ever lack the potential to produce life is irrelevnt to my theology. All that matters is that fundamentals can have the potential to produce life in any universe, and we know that the answer to that question is yes.-"I think anything that concerns God's relationship with the world and humanity is of vital theological concern."-There you go, making two assertions at once again and connecting them with "and". Sorry, but I just think this is sloppy argumentation, and it is very frustrating when we're trying to be as precise as possible. So I'm forced to break this down into two statements.-First consider this: "I think anything that concerns God's relationship with the world...is of vital theological concern." I've explained that God sets worlds into motion to watch them unfold. I have no idea whether he "bothers" to do this for worlds that don't "go anywhere." I just don't see that answering that question has all that relevance to any theology that's the least bit interesting. How can a "world" without any "vitality" be of "vital" interest to theology? Only worlds that produce conscious organisms have theological relevance, at least to us as human beings.-Which brings me to your second statement: "I think anything that concerns God's relationship with...humanity is of vital theological concern." All I can say to this is, "Duh!" Tell me something that isn't as plain as the nose on your face.-"Others might argue that if he deliberately designed life as it is, he's responsible for the suffering of all living creatures. That's what I took to be the originality of your theology."-It's not that all that original. It's a main theme in the process theology from Whitehead to Griffin. I only happened to stumble into it from my own religious experience and my scientific understanding of the world we live in, and later discovered that it was nothing new.-"God didn't make us, so he's not responsible. Naturally, you will stand by that. I'm only questioning your dismissal of the issue as irrelevant to theology."-Hopefully the "issue" of true relevance is all cleared up now, and you realize that it never should have been in question.