philosophy of science: meaning and functions (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, September 23, 2018, 13:37 (2034 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

PART ONE

For the sake of brevity and coherence, I shall juxtapose some of the entries:

DAVID: Yes, who knows?! Your problem is ours. None of us 'know' if God exists. We cannot 'know'. That is where faith has to appear. Belief in him for me is a logical conclusion. You cannot reach that result for some innate reason, which I believe is that you want absolute truth.

Of course we would all like to have “absolute truth”, and of course we can’t have it, but faith does not “have to appear”. The “innate reason” why I cannot share your logical conclusion is that it is no more and no less logical than the opposite conclusion.

dhw: Does he want us to tell him how clever he is? Is he that humanly vain?[/b] If so, why can’t he also be that humanly bored that he wants to create strange creatures, including us, to relieve his isolation"

TONY: When David mentions that he offered proof through works, you jumped to "Does he want us to tell him how clever he is? Is he that humanly vain?" Sure, you threw a question mark on it, but the implication was not made by David. How does one offering proof of ability and purpose correlate to vanity? Why should an individual that created something not be rightly proud of their creation, and want the credit for having created it? Is that vanity?

You have ignored the context. David constantly complains that in searching for purpose, I humanize his God, and so he rejects the boredom line. (“I think Tony has offered an excellent answer and a proper description of the humanizing you persist in presenting.”) For vanity you substitute “proud” and “want the credit”. Why is being proud and wanting credit less human than being bored with isolation?

TONY quoting dhw: "The idea of a spectacle does not exclude love, and I can well believe that your God might for instance love humans who worship him, but it also allows for “selfish amusement” and indifference to suffering."

I can’t remember the context of this comment, but David is constantly telling us that we can only guess at your God’s nature through his works, and so of course the spectacle allows for this interpretation!

DHW... "Not “just” bored. Bored. Now please tell me why [boredom] is frivolous or capricious, or more trivial than the desire to grow and develop by ending his isolation (your hypothesis).

TONY: Doing something because your bored is like saying, "I have nothing better to do, so why not.." It doesn't imply any larger motive than simply alleviation of boredom. By definition that is frivolous. It does not imply growth, it does not imply purpose, other than He's "bored and lonely".

In order (= purpose) to relieve his boredom he creates a spectacle that enables him to grow and develop. It might help us, though, if you explain how he grows and develops. Could it be that he extends his own experience by creating a world full of love and hate, beauty and ugliness, joy and pain?

TONY: Saying that he did it purely for entertainment, amusement, or as a cure for boredom are all forms of capriciousness or frivolity, literally "not having any serious purpose or value".

You quoted me as saying: “….perhaps I should not use the word “entertainment”, as people do tend to associate it with amusement”. Let me then state with all seriousness that I regard the relief of isolation and boredom as an extremely serious purpose. Indeed loneliness and lack of any kind of occupation are a huge human problem in our day and age. I can well imagine that the prospect of eternity spent in isolation with nothing to do would be
pretty unbearable. Can't you?

TONY (later): For god to create one offspring, your idea of boredom and/or loneliness is likely spot on.

Then why all this opposition to the idea? If he could create one offspring to end the boredom of isolation, why shouldn’t he have created the whole spectacle of life for the same reason? And I really don’t see why you insist that Christ was his only direct creation, especially when Genesis tell us that it was God who dunnit!

TONY: Further, it implies that when he grows bored with us, we will just get tossed aside too, because He is indifferent to the suffering of others that he allowed for his own 'selfish amusement'. […]

It may be so. If he exists, I certainly hope it isn’t. But you are confusing speculation with belief, and I can’t help wondering if your comments don’t link up with your desire for “assured expectation of things not beheld”. The concept of an indifferent or even sadistic God is the worst of nightmares. But it is possible. Life as we know it contains as much pain as it does joy, and it is faith not reason which enables some people to believe in a loving, caring God.