Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Thursday, April 08, 2021, 19:31 (1323 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm deadly serious, not word playing. How you live your life has nothing to do with having distinct goals in a future. A free-for-all advance is goalless in itself. It doesn't know where it is going nor does God watching it. Yours is a humanizing approach to God as I view it. God purposely creates, apparently something about Him you don't understand, as your free-for-all can wander in any direction.

dhw: Some humans live their lives with very specific goals for their future: to become rich, to raise a family, to play football for England, to write a successful novel….some even have goals for each day. It is a very human trait to have a goal (and is probably a darn sight healthier than just drifting aimlessly through life!). But I’ll take one of the above goals, as an illustration of the point as well as offering the chance of a pun or two if you want word play! In a football match, the goal is to score goals and win the game. But what would be the point if you already knew the result? The inventor of the sport did not want anyone including himself to know the result beforehand. He “purposely created” an activity that was open-ended – apparently something you don’t understand: that open-endedness can be a purpose in itself. Your own example could be your always-in-total-control God’s creation of free will, but I never hear you talk of this "purposely created" “free-for-all” behaviour as “humanizing” God.

Totally off point: human free will is no part of creating new organisms through a process of evolution Your free-will-evolution is a guideless process of creation.

dhw: In brief, if your God WANTED a free-for-all (unpredictable football match) instead of a puppet show in which he pulled all the strings, he would have "purposely created" it, and the one is no more and no less "human" than the other.

My God had a goal of creating humans through a process of designed evolution. He would not want an unguided process.

DAVID: Nothing in your entry has anything to do with the use of allegorical terms in describing God. Allegorical terms are used to describe God, Himself as an allegorical personage, not His intentions or plans. The difference is very clear.

dhw: Nothing in this whole discussion has anything to do with allegorical terms, unless you regard the analogies we use to illustrate our theories as allegories. This thread only concerns your theory of evolution and the problem of theodicy, both of which hinge on his intentions or plans. All this talk of “allegory” with your long quote about interpreting the Bible is nothing but a red herring. Please get back to issues and tell us at last why it is not humanizing for your God to want only to create humans, to enjoy creating and possibly to want recognition, but it is “very human” for him want to create a free-for-all and to create BECAUSE he enjoys creating.

To repeat: "My God had a goal of creating humans through a process of designed evolution. He would not want an unguided process." And allegory is important in thinkin g of God's motives. His 'enjoyment' of creating is understood allegorically, since we theists don't think of God as creating solely for His own enjoyment or doing it for a sense of required enjoyment. A free-for-all is rudderless. Of course an all-powerful God is capable of doing that if He wished, but why would a purposeful God wish that, losing control?