Consciousness: and brain damage (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 24, 2018, 14:22 (2493 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I will resist any attempt to analyze a humanized God. I won't even try, as you keep doing. We cannot know as you point out. Why try? All my other opinions that you list above are based on reasoned thought as you stated. Your view of God differs from mine.

We cannot know if God exists. Why try? We cannot know God’s purpose. Why try? We cannot know God’s methods. Why try? And yet you wrote two brilliant books on these very subjects. We try because we want to find explanations for all the great mysteries of life. Our efforts to do so are part of our human nature, and I am full of admiration at your own efforts to explain the inexplicable. However, if God exists, his motives and his nature are integral to solving the mysteries, and that is why we try to find clues in the only evidence we have, which is the world as we think we know it. I do not believe for one second that you exclude these matters from your thoughts just because you cannot “know” the answers. The difference between us in these current discussions lies in our interpretation of your God’s evolutionary purpose and method. It is impossible to talk of purpose without attempting to read the mind of the doer, which is why you come up with ideas like your God setting us problems, watching us with interest, wanting to have a relationship with us (what could be more “human” than that?). Your refusal to consider an alternative to anthropocentrism (purpose) and preprogramming/dabbling (method) therefore has nothing to do with our not being able to “know”, or with “humanizing”. Once more I will leave you to figure out what other reasons you might have.