A possible God's possible purpose and nature (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 19:11 (1275 days ago) @ dhw

The article “Milky Way has a twin” raised some questions which might possibly take us into areas we have touched on rather than explored. It may well be that we shan’t make any further progress on the two subjects that form the heading, but I’ll set the ball rolling and we’ll see where it goes.

DAVID: This tells us a galaxy like ours exists and there must be others, and they could contain Earths. It doesn't disturb me if God is sponsoring life/humans in many places.

dhw: If God exists, I’d find it a bit strange that he would confine his interests to a single planet, let alone a single species plus food supply. One can’t help asking why else he would create the billions of galaxies.

Why ask? I simple accept what we see as God's wish to create.

DAVID: We agree multiple Earths are possible, even probable.

dhw: We do. And if we then speculate on what forms that life might take, we will be confronted by a whole raft of questions. For instance, the subject of a possible God’s purpose immediately springs to mind. If life elsewhere is limited to microbes, what would be the point? A planetful of nothing but bacteria, forever eating whatever there is to be eaten, doesn’t sound like much of a purpose.

Why do you decide if life is on other Earth's it must be limited to bacteria?

dhw: But – a side issue here – it would certainly strengthen the case for abiogenesis: if conditions were right, the necessary materials would automatically form themselves into primitive life, and perhaps in some cases primitive life would evolve into more complex life.

Why do you jump to the conclusion it must be abiogenesis on these foreign Earths? Why can't God start life elsewhere? That is what I think. It doesn't disturb me. Why can't it even evolve to brilliant humans or their equivalent?

dhw: our subject is going to be your God’s possible purpose and nature, not his existence.

Excellent approach.

dhw: If you believe that God did it all, and there are other Earths with other life forms, the less likely it becomes that we Earthlings are his focal point. Away goes the argument that Earth is special and we were your God’s one and only purpose.

It doesn't 'go away' at all. We Earthlings are special focal point here. We can accept other Earths might be special and support life and might evolve specialized life forms comparable to humans. Why not? Why can't God have several focal points in the universe? It answers you unreasonable weird worry God made the universe unnecessarily too big.

dhw: “Purpose” has always been a major issue between us. Even as an agnostic, I find it impossible to even think about your God without wondering why he would have created life (including humans, of course), and what this creation tells us about the nature of the creator.

Well. What we have covered is we have minds that think, which makes us somewhat equal to God's mind and which allows our abstract theorizing to recognize the concept of a God.

dhw: Our starting point, then, is the possibility of life elsewhere, and why it doesn’t “disturb” you, despite your belief that we are your God’s one and only purpose for creating the universe.

Once we open up the possibility of other Earths with other possible humans, your limited misinterpretation of my overall theology quickly disappears. Human-similar forms doesn't bother me at all, as I've shown above.

dhw: However, for good measure, I will also add a factor which we have never included in our discussions, and that is your belief in an afterlife. That too raises the question why. What aspects of your God’s purpose and/or nature do you think an afterlife might reflect?

We both agree NDE's strongly suggest an afterlife. I have no problem with other human-similar forms having their own afterlife. Why should God treat other forms elsewhere in the universe in a different manner? Human-similar is to understand a thinking mind equal to ours, the extraordinary result of evolution once neurons were created. God has every right to create as many human-similars as He wishes.