Reading God's divine nature Part II (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Wednesday, August 07, 2019, 10:01 (1934 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Among the things we need to delete from our conception of divine action is the idea that it amounts to an “interference” with what happens in the world. Creation is not a matter of God tinkering with the natural order so as to make it do what it otherwise would not do. It is a matter of his making it the case that there is any natural order at all.” (David’s bold)

dhw: Goodbye to David’s proposal that God dabbles – specially designing this, that and the other in order to prepare different organisms for different environments which he may or may not have programmed or dabbled, although he is always in full control.

DAVID: This theological view is that God sets up a natural order that runs itself. Fine. My thought about dabbling has always been a tentative alternative. I can easily accept the author's viewpoint that dabbling is not required.

The “theological view” that the natural order runs itself supports my proposal that if God exists, he set up a mechanism whereby evolution would run itself! It not only excludes your dabbling, but it also excludes your one and only alternative to dabbling, which is preprogramming. Progress at last!

QUOTE: Once again, negative theology is crucial, because we have to subtract from our understanding of this model any of the limitations that apply to finite intellects like ours. (DAVID’s bold)

dhw: Why do we “have to”? This means that ANYTHING we believe we can understand about God – e.g. that he can think, plan, design and have a purpose just as we can - must be wrong. How does McCabe KNOW that his God has no human attributes?

DAVID: Because, as I've always preached, WE CANNOT know God's personality in any other way than looking at His Works […] H.sapiens is such an amazing result, so far above what might have been expected (Adler) we must have been the main purpose.

He knows God has no human attributes, because we cannot know God’s personality? Strange logic. And once again we have “main” purpose, echoing “primary” purpose. Please tell us his other possible purposes. But of course we CANNOT know God’s personality; we CANNOT even know if he exists. So yes, we can only guess at reasons why…..And in your case, you cannot even guess why he would have specially designed the whale’s flipper and the weaverbird’s nest when his one and only purpose (unless you can give us other purposes) was to specially design H. sapiens.

QUOTE: All the same, these days the greater danger is to go to the opposite extreme of crudely anthropomorphizing God, and McCabe does a great service in exposing the folly and theological shallowness of doing so. (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: […] at last we must see the negative side of trying to define God or imagine His thoughts. I don't, but dhw does as he attempts to be an imaginary theist.

dhw: Who are you kidding? We both accept the logic of the design argument, but you then insist on imagining your God’s thoughts and methods: he is in total control (though you’re not sure about local changes in the environment)…[Here I repeated the list of David’s other fixed beliefs.]

DAVID: Once again you choose to ignore that I have come to the belief God chose to evolve the universe, the Earth, and life to achieve his goals.

Once more we have plural “goals”. If God exists, I ACCEPT that he chose evolution as his method to achieve his goals. I do not accept that he specially designed every life form, and did so for the sole purpose of designing H. sapiens.

dhw: As for the article, you might just as well say that life and the universe are the product of some unknown and unknowable power and leave it at that.[…] Just don’t give the unknown power a name, and stop pretending that you know its purpose (if it has one), and its inexplicable method of achieving that purpose, and then we can all sit happily together on the fence. “Negative theology” might just as well be called “negative atheism”: life and the universe are the product of a natural order which came into existence through a cause about which we know nothing. I suggest a single term for both: “agnosticism”.

DAVID: So once again you have glossed over the theological point God is an uncaused cause. We actually agree. There must be a first cause. Something does not come from nothing . You give it no name, but admit it designs. Only an uncaused mind fits the puzzle. We call it God and you object to giving it a name. Fine. We are both in agreement except for the name. But don't assume that that mind has any human attributes when you delve into thought behind purposes.

Nothing “glossed over”. My bold refers to the first cause. You have missed the point. I do not “admit it designs” because, using my limited finite human intellect, that would mean agreeing that it is conscious and has a purpose, and I am not supposed to impose any attributes on God. We are left with the argument that the first cause is unknown and unknowable: it has no name, no known purpose, no known attributes. And that = negative theology and negative atheism, which amounts to agnosticism.