philosophy of science: meaning and functions (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 04, 2018, 14:54 (2241 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: When I say we have created a vast range of activities which we can enjoy, I am including the joy of creation, which includes my own. And I am so glad that, instead of having your God gearing every form of life to the production of the brain of Homo sapiens, you now have him observing the whole spectacle with interest and enjoyment, which suggests to me that he may have created the whole spectacle so that he could watch it with interest and enjoyment. Wouldn’t you agree? Perhaps now you will answer the question I asked you in my last post: what is the opposite of interesting?

Tony:I contention with this falls in line with my contention into your characterization of love. While I acknowledged that love does in fact bring the person demonstrating love pleasure, you take the position (or at least you seemed to in your rebuttal) that love is primarily self-serving, as opposed to the pleasure of it being a ancillary side-effect. The truism that 'there is more pleasure in giving then there is in receiving' encompasses this ideal. These words, attributed to Christ, only serve to illustrate my point. When you show selfless love you are rewarded with good feelings. Your view seems to be that if you do something pleasing to yourself, you can be loving too. This is the difference, and what I was unable to successfully articulate.

Yes, I believe Jehovah acted out of love. 1 John 4:7-8. Yes, I agree that he derived pleasure from acting out of love. That does not make love self-serving, it makes it rewarding. They are different concepts, and I do not, and can not, accept the way you try to flip them around and imply that selfishness is love and love is selfishness, regardless of whether you are talking about God or man.

And I will stick to my position and Adler's: we cannot know that God acts with love. The view that God is love is wishful human level thinking and hope.