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

by David Turell , Monday, June 07, 2021, 15:39 (1263 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: It is your illogical response to my theory that is wrong. My all powerful, all purposeful God knew exactly what He was doing. The history of evolution as a process invented and designed by God is perfectly reasonable to believers.

dhw: Your usual rush into generalizations that fail to tackle the issue raised by your particular theory. Of course evolution as a process invented and designed by your God is perfectly reasonable – even to agnostics like myself. And an all-powerful, all–purposeful God is equally reasonable. But, for the thousandth time, what is not reasonable is to claim that your all-powerful, all-purposeful God had only one purpose – to design humans – and therefore designed billions of galaxies and millions of life forms etc. which had no connection with humans.

How were the life-necessary elements created? How do you know so definitely the whole universe was not necessary? My God created the universe as it is following His purposes. You are stop and go as you think about a possible God. Humans are here, note the bold, and only we can think a God might exist. And you deny His purpose. Study His works and accept them as required. Then perhaps your illogical objections will disappear.

dhw: Other problems thrown up by your thinking – apart from the “continuity” problem covered under “Miscellany” - include a God, all of whose works are “for the good”, deliberately designing the bacteria and viruses that cause untold suffering; the bush of past life providing us with lunch, although past lunches were for the past and not for the present; and God as an experimental scientist, a creator who enjoys creating, or the inventor of a mechanism enabling his creations to make their own decisions, being described as “totally illogical”. Quite apart from the “totally”, why are these views of him less logical than a God who knows everything in advance, wants total control, is all that we consider “good” despite designing things that we consider “bad”, and has only one purpose which he pursues by designing things that have no connection with his one and only purpose?

DAVID: Your usual problem of imagining a part human form of God and total confusion about His purposes.

dhw: Your usual escape from the problems themselves to vague generalizations: you cannot avoid a “part human” God yourself – I’ve listed some of his characteristics above – and in each of my alternatives there is a clear purpose. The only confusion concerning purpose is your insistence on a single purpose (humans) which your God apparently achieves by designing life forms that have no connection with his purpose.

My God is not human in any sense. We've been over all of this before, and does not need repeating. Your need to have my God human is only to overcome your obvious humanizing of a weak-god theory who experiments, lets organisms evolve secondhand on their own, decides purposes on the fly and generally comes across as as not sure of himself.