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

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 07, 2019, 18:24 (1933 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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!

What??? A pre-programmed genome is set up from the beginning to run itself.

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.

dhw: 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.

You have answered your own question.

dhw: 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.

Easy answer. God chose to evolve.

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.

dhw: 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.

But again , design doesn't just pop by chance. There has to be an uncaused first cause that has the ability to create very complex designs. And we are created to recognize that logic.