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

by David Turell , Saturday, May 29, 2021, 19:03 (1272 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We don't know the answer, but I accept them as part of God's purpose in design.

dhw: We all “accept” their existence. You believe he designed them with a purpose, but without humans you can’t think what that purpose might be.

I view the entire universe as fine-tuned to allow life. Like your approach to evolution you are now slicing up the universe into differing unrelated parts. I view it as all related to the purpose of allowing life to appear.

DAVID: You are implying, without any reason, that God just creates for the sake of creating, when I have clearly proposed God is very purposeful in creating what He wishes to create, as in a goal of humans.

dhw> It was you who told us that “I simply accept what we see as God's wish to create.” I agree that if he exists, he must have a purpose!...But your guess is that he created the universe in order to create humans, and so I ask why you think your purposeful God would have wanted to create galaxies (a) without life or with only with primitive life, or (b) with humans or their like. Then all of a sudden, your rigid belief in your guess that humans were the purpose turns into a refusal to guess at his purpose for any of these, because that would only be a guess and not knowledge! (“To know requires more research, not guesses.”)

Of course, to fully understand the universe requires more knowledge from research. We are here on Earth and I've said others like us may be elsewhere. God has created deeply observant, very thoughtful humans. That was obviously a purpose that Adler uses to prove God's existence. The type of universe we have allows life. And all you want is unanswerable answers using your God-given human inquiring mind when such minds in the past have been wrong about what God has invented by claiming poor design.

DAVID: It is amazing both you and I are here to debate.

dhw: ...there’s not much point in our being here to debate if you simply say we must accept your belief that God exists, designed every species de novo, his sole intention was to design humans, he must have had a “good” reason for designing all the “bad” bacteria and viruses, and we are going to live on after death but we shouldn’t ask why.

DAVID: […] That is the point of Dayenu. You are agnostic, I'm a believer. Why? You want some logical answers to some unanswerable questions. I am willing to accept the unexplained facts and assume our future human research will elucidate God's reasons.

dhw: My agnosticism has nothing to do with it. You believe your own guesses, as listed above – none of which have been confirmed by human research – and you refuse to answer questions about their logicality and to consider alternatives which even you acknowledge as being logical.

I believe my own conclusions based on the evidence I have reviewed. You ask me for guessed-at opinions and I have constantly refused and then you blame me for not wanting to discuss. Please accept that much of what you would like to know is unanswerable.

DAVID: But we are way off the main point. Does the possibility or probability of humans elsewhere cause theological disturbance. It makes Earth humans less special, or does it? I don't think so.

dhw: Yes, the point of this thread is to discuss possible purposes and what they might tell us about your God’s nature. I have listed three options: no life, primitive life, sophisticated life. No life and primitive life leave us with the problem of why God would bother. Sophisticated life knocks on the head the theory that we humans are his only purpose – but that is not a “theological disturbance”. It is a disturbance to your theory that God created the universe just for us humans. And you are still left with the question of what your purposeful God’s purpose might be in creating all these galaxies with no life, primitive life, or human-like life, which somewhat confusingly he wished to create but did not wish to create.

The confusion, as usual, is yours. The bold makes the point. My view is not described in the bold. If God wanted to produce humans and they are everywhere in the universe that is OK with my theological theories. If humans are only here that is OK. This universe is fine-tuned for life. I don't question God's work, while you unreasonably do. Wait for research to explain. I can. Can you?