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

by dhw, Monday, June 28, 2021, 13:57 (1242 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My theory is not disconnected through accepting God's works. [...]

dhw: In the context of life’s evolution, God’s works - if he exists - consist of every form of life that ever existed (no matter how they were all produced). And so you accept every form of life that ever existed! Your theory is that every form of life was specially designed as “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans” and their lunch, although 99% of them had no connection with humans or their lunch. Please stop conflating your God’s works with your theory about why and how he produced them.

DAVID: Stop giving us your tunnel-visioned God. The giant bush of life, produced by God was necessary to fill out His plans for evolution. The bold fits.

But according to you, he only had one plan for evolution, which was to design H. sapiens plus lunch. That is your tunnel vision, and you have repeatedly admitted that you cannot explain why he chose the method bolded above. If you can’t explain it, then maybe at least part of your theory is wrong.

DAVID: God is my belief as to why we are here. How do you explain us?

I repeated the three theistic explanations that I have been offering you for the last few years: 1) experimentation; 2) the idea for humans came late on in the history; 3) a deliberately designed free-for-all in which the rudimentary intelligence of individual cells led to all the subsequent complexities, culminating in ourselves. You have agreed that all these explanations (unlike your own) fit in logically with the history of evolution.

DAVID: Logical only for a weak humanized God: has to experiment, no initial goals, no control over goals (free-for-all), as I've explained before, and you always avoid mentioning. Do not distort my position about hour God.

The silly “humanization” argument is dealt with below. Experimentation would explain why – if we were his goal – he “had to” (your expression) design the rest of the bush. “No initial goals” is your distortion. You are sure that he loves creating and is interested in his creations, and I propose that this may constitute his goal in creating an ever changing variety, culminating in the most interesting of all forms: a fully conscious being. The free-for-all would be part of the interest – to see where his invention would lead (though he could always dabble if he wished), as opposed to knowing everything in advance. I have never avoided mentioning goals, and the free-for-all is a deliberate sacrifice of control. Please do not distort the various alternative explanations that I offer for the history of evolution, including us.

DAVID: […] I have agreed your theories are logical only if applied to your humanized God. Obviously you position is so weak, you must leave out that part of my thinking.

dhw: I have never left out this silly objection. You have agreed in the past that your God probably/possibly has patterns of thought and emotions similar to ours, and you confirmed this only last week: “I am sure we mimic him in many ways as your statement shows, but just how much is unknown.” So you humanize him as a control freak who is single-minded, has one purpose, knows how to achieve it, plans it all advance, and always has good intentions. You even compare yourself to him through your experience of designing things.

DAVID: You can't make my God 'human' by calling Him a 'control freak' a small percentage of humans, when God is anything but human. The god you describe is unsure of Himself, not in any sense God-like. And later: That He must have some mental attributes that mimic our human attributes or we mimic Him is reasonable, but in no way humanizes Him, a personage like no other person.

I am not making your God “human”. I am pointing out that you have chosen to endow him with different human characteristics from mine. A God who decides to create life as an interesting free-for-all, or who likes to experiment, and who can even learn as he goes along, is not weak, or namby-pamby or unsure of himself. You are sure that we mimic him in many ways. But you are only prepared to accept one way and one goal, even though you have no idea why your always-in-control, know-it-all, well-intentioned God would choose to separately design millions of life forms etc. that have no connection with humans, in order to separately design humans plus lunch.

dhw: In response to my efforts to find an explanation for theodicy, you wrote: “All you can see is the dark side. You should be thankful you are here.” Theodicy IS the problem of the dark side. And your solution (apart from your faith that one day it will be shown that the dark side is actually good, because you believe your God’s intentions are always good) is to look on the bright side, which I can only take to mean that we should forget about the dark side.

DAVID: Wrong take. I raised the issue.

Yes, you raised the issue, and now all you want us to do is forget about it, look on the bright side, and be thankful we are here. The rest of your post is already covered above.