Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 04, 2018, 09:31 (2271 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: If there is a God, “purpose” requires an attempt to read his mind – which David objects to, unless we agree to his own reading of the mind of God, whose purpose in creating the universe was apparently to create the brain of Homo sapiens so that we can have a relationship with him although he remains hidden. (David will correct me if this summary is wrong.) In view of the astonishingly rich spectacle of an ever changing history of comings and goings – with humans clearly offering the richest spectacle of all – I have suggested that if there is a God, his purpose might have been to create an astonishingly rich spectacle of an ever changing history etc. I can’t help feeling that an eternally conscious mind would be bored to oblivion if it had nothing to do all eternity long. Whether such a God has any purpose beyond that of the spectacle will only be revealed to me if there is some form of conscious afterlife.

DAVID: Your supposed boredom for God is your usual humanized view of Him. My human version of Him is that He's got a universe to run, a Heaven to manage, more evolutionary changes to design, and at the same time put some mind to the next universe which will follow this one after it has stretched out of existence. After all universes are finite matter, and God is full of purpose for eternity.

And who/what forces him to run the universe and heaven and more evolution and new universes? Could it possibly be that he himself wants to do all this? And if so, why do you think he wants to do it? What do YOU think is his purpose for eternity? Anyway, I’m pleased to see that you have left out your theory that the brain of Homo sapiens is his prime purpose.

TONY (in reply to my suggestion at the head of this post): That assumes that there is only small purpose and big purpose and nothing in between. A person that builds a house, might be planning a neighborhood, and is certainly planning for the various elements of the house to keep it standing upright, but what about all the choices in between, that neither keep the house upright nor add to the neighborhood directly?

Sorry, but I was responding to the post in which you complained that “we do not extend the idea of purpose beyond our own existence to say, what is the purpose of everything, not just our purpose. […] [We] forget that designers do not design without purpose.” Perhaps instead of drawing a human analogy you could comment directly on what I have proposed in relation to the purpose of everything (my macropurpose), not just our purpose (my micropurpose), and let us know what you believe to be the purpose of everything.