philosophy of science: meaning and functions (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, September 24, 2018, 09:09 (2040 days ago) @ David Turell

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."

dhw: 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!

DAVID: Spectacle for entertainment is humanizing.

So is Tony’s “proud and wanting credit”, so is your God wanting to prove himself, wanting a relationship, and your earlier support for the idea of a spectacle. What’s wrong with that? Why are you so sure your God created humans without ever having experienced any of the thoughts that humans have?

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".

dhw: 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?

DAVID: You have again imagined God from a human point of view: "Indeed loneliness and lack of any kind of occupation are a huge human problem in our day and age." Comparing God to us!

See above for your insistence that you know how God doesn’t think, but here I am replying to Tony’s arguments. He claims that although his God’s first creation may have been the result of boredom, generally relief from boredom and isolation is frivolous. It is not.

dhw to Tony:): I don’t accept the logic of a God who wants to prove himself to humans by creating weird and wonderful creatures, most of which we never knew, but at the same time hides himself. You and David rightly emphasize logic in your case for design, but the moment you speculate about his purposes, logic goes out of the window. And I do not regard David's argument that God must think differently from us as a satisfactory basis for belief.

DAVID: My belief is not based on God's pattern of thought. Where did that idea come from?

When I point out the logical fallacies in your hypotheses, you claim that God doesn’t think like humans. As if you knew.

dhw: I’m sure every organism has the serious purpose of its own survival, just as I am equally sure that life has gone on despite the disappearance of 90%+ of them. I have no doubt that wind, rain and sun etc. are essential to life as we know it. But I really don’t know what this has to do with your God’s purpose for creating the universe and life.

DAVID: Evolution by definition must have advances and discards. How else would it advance? Can you imagine an Earth filled with every organisms still existing from day one of origin of life? Would nature be balanced in that state?

Of course it would be balanced. But then I agree you would not have evolution, which in my view does depend on an ever changing balance. What is your point?

DAVID: But you always downgrade the importance of my balance of nature statements.

dhw: Originally you tried to use it to bolster your anthropocentrism. Nowadays most of your statements show the self-evident fact that if there is a change in the balance of nature, the balance of nature changes (e.g. by the effects of human interference, or the impact of natural disasters). Nothing to do with your anthropocentrism or your God’s purpose.

DAVID: Balance of nature forms the Earth as well as living beings. It supports the ability to evolve from single cells to us. That is my point. We are the result of evolution.

It is the changing balance of nature that I see as triggering evolution and also resulting from evolution. You don’t need to tell me that we are the result of evolution, since that is a belief we share.