Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Sunday, November 15, 2009, 17:55 (5486 days ago) @ dhw

"My interest is not in what God may or may not have done in other universes"-But the quote of mine that you opened with doesn't not talk about other universes. It talks about our universe. In our universe, it may be possible for the natural laws to produce genetic codes that differ from what happened on planet Earth.-"Your own solution to this theological problem is that life on Earth (the only kind we know anything about) came into being by accident"-Let me refine that statement. The particular form of life on Earth is the result of unknown historical accidents along the path that life actually took on Earth. We don't know whether in our universe life "came into being by accident," because we don't know how much of the laws of nature were deliberately designed by God to have the potential to develop life. The particular path it took on Earth is the result of accidents that science hasn't figured out yet. But the potential to produce life in general seems to be written into the very structure of the physical laws of our universe. In that sense, the phenomenon of the development of life itself would not be accidental but would be inevitable, given "friendly" enough initial conditions.-Where my theology comes in is recognizing that a primary goal of God is to produce fundamentals that have the potential to evolve into forms of life that eventually reach sufficient complexity that God can contact them from within and influence their behavior by exposing himself to them, and that contact and influence takes place through consciousness.-"...which means God was not responsible and has no control. I am questioning this thesis."-I would question that thesis also, and I'm certainly not making it in the naive way you're expressing it. God is responsible for setting up the particular nature of the fundamentals out of which the laws of our universe arise. He is not responsible for the particular directions that the workings out of those laws take, and has no control of those particular directions until -- and this is an incredibly important point that you keep overlooking -- organisms achieve consciousness. At that point, the divine influences can rise up in those creatures and influence them. That is what God is "waiting for": the development of creatures that he can influence by exposing himself in their consciousness. -His influence is still minimal in human beings (and elephants and Rose-breasted cockatoos, etc.). But as species continue to evolve in powers of consciousness, his "control" over them continues to increase until eventually he has complete control, and in a technological civilization that can lead to the self-conscious, divine transformation of galaxies, and certainly within the 13.7 billion year lifetime of the universe that we live in. -It's just that it hasn't yet happened here on planet Earth. There is still an enormous struggle between good and evil on our planet, a struggle I might add that only arises with the emergence of consciousness. Before the emergence of consciousness, there is no good and evil in life. Evil arises only when the divine promptings in consciousness are ignored or rejected.