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

by dhw, Tuesday, June 15, 2021, 11:38 (1255 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My God know the outcome. We are here, very different than anything else ever appearing. Therefore we are an obvious goal. Adler's reasoning.

dhw: Again you say “an obvious goal”. That = one goal. What were the other goals? We are very similar in many ways to our animal ancestors, since so many of our basic physical components and instincts are the same, but yes, our minds are vastly superior. How does that come to mean that your God specially designed the brontosaurus because he wanted to specially design us?

DAVID: Another goal was food supply. The human goal was an endpoint of an evolutionary process which was created from one stage to the next, each stage supported by ecosystems of food supply.

I have always included food supply. Please explain why your God could not have specially designed humans and their food supply without first designing the brontosaurus and its food supply, plus the 99% of other organisms and their food supplies that had no connection with humans.

DAVID: You can distort my version of God any way you wish, but I present a very purposeful God who keeps on His course, and you call Him a control freak.

dhw: I present a very purposeful God who 1) keeps on his course to allow a free-for-all, or 2) experiments to design a being like himself. Always purposeful, always on his course. Meanwhile, do you deny that you believe he wished to control the production of every life form, econiche, lifestyle, natural wonder etc.?

DAVID: I won't deny my vision of a very purposeful God who knows exactly what He is doing on teh way to His goals.

So you agree that your version is a control freak. Meanwhile, what are the other goals apart from humans and their food supply? Why do you believe that a God whose goal is to create a free-for-all is not purposeful and does not know what he is doing on the way to fulfilling his goal of a free-for-all?

DAVID: And free will among all animals with a brain shows we are not automatons. He certainly lets us do our own thing.

dhw: Precisely. He was happy enough NOT to control our behaviour. And so, by analogy, I propose that he might also have been happy enough to give organisms the means to design their own adaptations, major and minor, not to mention their own lifestyles, strategies and natural wonders.

DAVID: Your form of God, not mine.

I know your beliefs are fixed. I am merely pointing out that if he was willing to give up control of our behaviour, it should not be inconceivable that he was also willing to give up control of evolution. At least that would offer you an explanation for all the different, higgledy-piggledy, non-human varieties of life forms that came and went, and it would relieve you of the problem of why your God with his good intentions deliberately designed all the murderous bacteria and viruses that cause so much suffering.

dhw: You clearly have little grasp of the creative processes. The analogy is far better than you think. When I start to write a play or a story, I normally have no idea how it will end. Part of the fascination of the whole creative process is finding out where it will lead. Perhaps this is one of those “thought patterns” you have said we probably/possibly share with God.

DAVID: Beautiful description of a writer's imagination. Perhaps why I've never tried fiction. I would want a conceived endpoint to tie it all together. Explains our differences about our God's personality.

dhw: Why should what you want be what your God wants? When you read a book, do you want to know the end of the story before you start? Please answer.

DAVID: Of course not, I don't read the last chapter first.

So it’s possible that your God also has the pleasure of following stories without knowing the ending in advance.

dhw: Perhaps he enjoys the excitement of DISCOVERY, just as I do when I’m writing. You offered the analogy, and I am explaining to you how it may well fit in with your God’s own thought patterns.

DAVID: My version of God knows exactly what He is doing and where He is going. Again your humanized version appears. Why do you want Him so human He mirrors us? His person is not in any way like ours.

You have no more idea what he is like than I do. But why do you think my version has him mirroring us? I am proposing that some of OUR characteristics mirror HIS – not the other way round! If he exists, HE is the creator. A lot of humans know exactly what they are doing and where they are going, but you have just given us an analogy between your God’s creativity and my own. Why do you now assume that your analogy is wrong, and that there is no way your God could enjoy the same excitement of creativity and discovery that I enjoy?