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

by dhw, Friday, June 11, 2021, 12:22 (1262 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution of the universe(transferred from “Miscellany”)
DAVID: As before I've done designs, and secondhand attempts don't work, as in telling the architect what is wanted and getting a mess.

dhw: As before, I see no analogy here. God presumably didn’t give you instructions on what to design – he gave you the mechanism to design what you wanted to design, and the independent intelligence to use the mechanism. I propose that if he exists, he did the same for other life forms. They do not have to design what he wants them to design. It’s left to them to decide. There is no “second-hand”! He would have provided both you and other organisms with the mechanism and the independent intelligence to use it

DAVID: Your view of God is not mine. If God has purposes for evolutionary advances, of course allowing organisms to do their own designs won't fit His goals and are secondhand.

Same again, but let’s pin it down to your actual belief: you think your God’s only purpose was to create humans and their lunch. And so “of course allowing organisms to do their own designs” would not fit his goal (singular). And that is what makes nonsense of your theory, because you cannot explain why a God whose only purpose was to design humans and their lunch should have designed millions of life forms and lunches that had no connection with humans and their lunch! So either his purpose was not to design humans etc., or he did not design the millions of life forms etc. which had no connection with humans etc.

DAVID: Most God-believing folks view Him as all powerful, all knowing, past present and future, all purposeful, etc. You always weaken and modify and make Him amorphous.

dhw: I don’t know why you are kow-towing to “most God-believing folks” when you pride yourself on your rejection of conventional religion, but in any case the image I have offered you above still has him as all-powerful and all purposeful, but deliberately creating something that he does not wish to control (as you accept when you insist that he gave humans free will). And I thought your objections were to the possible “human” thought patterns this image entails, which is the exact opposite of “amorphous”. It’s you who object to solid characteristics – though only when they differ from those you attribute to your God (e.g. he always has good intentions).

DAVID: Our free will is not in any way equivalent to designing de novo forms in evolution.

dhw: Dealt with above. As usual you dodge all my main points.

DAVID: Your tired 'dodge' complaint again. Our free will cannot be compared to tight design control of evolution itself. I can certainly complain about your poor comparison.

The dodge is the fact that you have picked on free will (a parenthesis) and ignored the rest of my post, in which I challenge your complaint that my alternative theories depict an “amorphous” God who is not all-powerful and all-purposeful. As regards free will, as you know perfectly well, the analogy concerns your God’s willingness to give up control.

DAVID: Those of us who believe don't think God's works have to be explained, and that results in your conjuring up a God who seems unsure of himself as He experiments with possible advances.

dhw: But you DO try to explain God’s works! You explain the great variety of life forms etc. as being individually designed by your God, and the reason you give is that he designed each of them as part of his one and only purpose to design humans, although 99% of them had no connection with humans.

DAVID: There you go again! When you've agreed to stop it.

It is impossible to stop it when you continuously try to make out that your view of God's purpose and method (i.e. your theory of evolution) is logical, and you then distort and denigrate the alternative theories that I propose.

dhw: As for my alternatives, experimentation is only one of them, and I have no idea why you should think that experimentation and willingness to try out and to learn new things denotes lack of self-confidence.

DAVID: My God knows exactly what He wants to accomplish and has done it. Quite an obvious comparison.

A God who wanted a free-for-all knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish and did it. Alternatively, if his aim was to produce a particular life form that had never existed before, why do you think it denotes personal insecurity if he tries different ways of producing the novelty?