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

by dhw, Thursday, August 08, 2019, 13:00 (1933 days ago) @ David Turell

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!

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

So back you go to your God providing the very first cells with programmes for every single multicellular life form, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life. “Running itself” in your theory means the old organism has already been programmed to pick the right programme at the right time in order to become the new organism, and so on for 3.8 billion years so far. What??? How about your God providing the first cells with the intelligence to work out new ways of coping with or exploiting different environments?

Dhw: (under “cellular intelligence”): Thank you for three more possible examples of cellular intelligence at work:
How plants got leaves […]
Horizontal gene transfer […]
Introducing the brain […]

DAVID: And it is very likely they are designed to contain intelligent instructions covering every possible need to respond.

So once again we have your God, whose one and only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, providing the very first cells with programmes for leaves, every problem that bacteria will ever face, every life form, every lifestyle and every natural wonder, in addition to every phase leading to humans and their big brains. I can only repeat your “what???”

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.

DAVID: You have answered your own question.

Which question? How can anyone KNOW whether God has human attributes if we cannot KNOW his personality? Not answered. What other purposes did God have if H. sapiens was only his main or primary purpose? Not answered.

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. […]

dhw: […]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.

DAVID: 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.

There has to be an uncaused first cause that results in the complexities of the universe and life. It can be argued that a first-cause, infinite and eternal universe in which energy and matter are for ever producing new combinations of matter will inevitably one day produce a combination of matter that will give rise to conditions suitable for life and to life itself. Infinity and eternity make for pretty favourable odds. No, I don’t believe it, but it is no more and no less feasible than a first-cause, infinite and eternal, unknown and unknowable mind with the power and intelligence to create a universe and conditions suitable for life, plus life itself. Hence “negative atheism” and “negative theism” = agnosticism.