Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Friday, May 03, 2019, 12:20 (2029 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Evolution of everything has taken the time it has taken. Now that your opinion is that God may have been limited or, presumably, may not have been limited (the God who is always in charge and in control), we can obviously tailor our hypotheses accordingly. And since you have no idea why he would have chosen yours, perhaps you might reconsider the theistic alternatives I have offered (e.g. humans not the one and only purpose, humans late arrival in God’s thinking, experimentation, bush resulting from free rein with dabbles)...

DAVID: I don't need to know why He chose to evolve us. Since He is in charge (as I believe) it was simply His choice. I am positive we are His prime purpose.

The latter is covered by the logical hypotheses of divine limitations, late arrival of idea, and experimentation, as opposed to the hypothesis of your God’s total control and no idea why he chose to go on specially designing anything but what he wanted to specially design.

DAVID: I have no reason to accept your views which are logical for you if you continue to have no fixed positions.

Not my views. I am simply offering different alternatives to your fixed position which leaves you with no idea etc. as above.

DAVID: Adler has nothing to do with agreeing with me. I use his point of our specialness to reach my views.

I accept your/Adler’s point of specialness, so you needn’t keep saying I ignore it, and we can focus on the rest of your hypotheses.

dhw: I’m glad you are no longer against the hypothesis that your God may have created life as a spectacle to relieve his isolation or to enjoy, much as a painter enjoys his own paintings, and of course you are right, we can only guess. That also applies to the very existence of God.

DAVID: I was never against your suppositions about God's thoughts, to which you have every right. I have the right to continue to criticize them as humanizing.

By all means, but I find it hard to imagine how your God could have created love, beauty, humour, hate, cruelty, vanity etc. if as first cause he didn’t have a clue what they were. In any case, since you constantly emphasize your God’s purposefulness, it seems pretty pointless then to dismiss any attempt to extrapolate purpose from the results of his work!