philosophy of science: meaning and functions (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 10, 2018, 09:36 (2024 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: What sort of God are you now trying to conjure up? A vast blob of conscious energy that has no feelings, no identity, no self? All this because although you constantly insist on how purposeful he is, you cannot stand the thought that his purpose might have been to keep himself occupied.

DAVID: As an eternal being God is not tied to a passage of time, which to humans creates a requirement to fill that time with productive efforts or pass-timing. I'm sure God contains all of the human attributes of thought in His thoughts we have but He is much more than that as He proceeds to create. We can only guess at his motives, so why bother?

So your God apparently creates universe after universe (before and after = time) containing humans whose behaviour (which requires befores and afters) he can observe with interest while also revelling in the joy of creation (which also requires befores and afters), but he does not feel any requirement to do so. He just does so with no purpose in mind, although for ten years you have hammered home the message that your God is purposeful. And now, as I continue to pursue YOUR argument, and as you can clearly find no fault in the logic of my hypothesis but dislike its implications, you resort to “why bother?” We don’t even know whether your God exists. We can’t know. So why bother to ask? Why did you bother to write two brilliant books about it, and why did I bother to set up this website? We bother because we care, and one of the inspiring things about humans is that, for all our faults and for all our ignorance, we refuse to give up.