Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Monday, November 23, 2009, 22:05 (5478 days ago) @ Frank Paris

"I know full well what a process is."
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>But do you "get" that everything is process?
 
YES
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> But, as you shall see in my response to some of your specific beliefs listed below the above quote, I believe you open yourself up to serious criticism from scientifically literate agnostics and atheists.
 
I frankly am a free spirit. I don't care about the criticism you warn me of.
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> To avoid those criticisms myself, I make minimal assumptions about how all things got started, and shy away from anything that smacks of the miraculous. Theology does not have to assume that we live in a universe that requires the supernatural. That is process theology's major contribution to thought.
Good explanation. Undertood. But the universe was started by God, who by definition is supernatural. -"I conceive of God as universal intelligence who thought up the universe"
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>I've had trouble with that view for 40 years. The main trouble I have with it is that if God knows what's in store for him, he'd be bored silly.
I think you are anthropomorphizing Him. We don't know what He thinks, or if His boredom even exists.
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>The point of my theology is that God doesn't have to "figure anything out" beforehand to get things going in such a way that his essence is gradually revealed.-This allows you to follow science exactly as it is interpreted by the atheistic scientists: "Darwin is perfect". The current consensus is not proof.
 
"I am conviced that the DNA, given by Him, is programmed to evolve life to us"
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> This is where you're going to get into trouble with scientifically literate people who have a deep understanding of evolution
I am just as literate. I have different conclusions.
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> If you require DNA to produce life, if your concept of God demands that, what would happen to your beliefs if science discovers life on another planet that has nothing to do with DNA, where genetic codes are constructed out of an entirely different chemistry?-Then I have to change my concepts.
 
"I think there is a joining with Him in an afterlife of thought"
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> Superficially, that's a pleasant thought, but I'm not sure it isn't beset with problems when you start analyzing it more closely. Where does it lead? Is there an evolution of thought in the afterlife, or do we suddenly know "everything"? Do you have any ideas of the afterlife that are more clearly spelled out than that simple sentence?
NO. I have no idea, nor does it matter to me.-"He watches the process that is going on and may occasionally interfere ."
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>This is where you're going to run into trouble with the scientifically literate, who see not a shred of evidence that the basic natural laws of the universe have ever been violated.
And I have read scientists, mainly atheists, who wonder where the laws came from.-"I think the odds of what we have discovered in life's processes are too complex to have been developed as a result of chance development."->
> And I think that anyone who truly understands the nature of evolution knows that only natural processes are required to produce life. Your belief as stated above will be regarded as blind faith and a confession that you don't truly understand how evolution works And here is a name for you of a theistic evolutionary scientist who takes this exact position: Donald R. Prothero. Look him up. Take a gander at his book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters. Just read pp. 351-359.-And I have read theistic scientists who feel exactly as I do. You are describing as consensus that is not proven. Yours is blind faith also.