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

by dhw, Wednesday, June 30, 2021, 12:23 (1240 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I can't endow God who is a personage like no other person with any real human attributes as you do. You are trying to force them into my description. God is not a person. We have some attributes that seem to be similar. We both can think, we both can plan a design and make it. But His scale is much grander. Here I tend to follow most of religions' descriptions of His personage. You don't. Where I differ from religious thought is the issue of His pure love of us. He created us but there is no way to know if He loves us. He may create just to create, nothing more.

dhw: Of course God is not a person. But if you want to discuss his purposes and methods, as well as the subject of theodicy, it is totally impossible to do so without also including human attributes, i.e. attributes which we “inherit” from him. What do you mean by “real” attributes? Why is wanting total control less humanly “real” than not wanting control? Of course his scale is grander: do you really think I’m proposing that creating a universe and life is on the same scale as creating a painting or inventing a rocket? You say there is no way to know if he loves us. And yet you are sure that he has good intentions. You say he may create just to create. Why is it beyond belief, then, that he may create – as you have said yourself – because he enjoys creating, and since you have said yourself that you believe he watches his creations with interest, why is it beyond belief that he might have created them because he wanted something he could watch with interest?

DAVID: All of your statement is valid, but we can never know how much is really true. My view of His personality is obviously not yours so we will not meet in the middle.

Thank you. Of course we can’t know what is true. That is why we theorize, but some theories make more sense than others. And so we discuss them to see if they fit in with whatever facts we do know. I find that your theory does not fit in with the facts, and have explained why, whereas you find that my alternatives do fit in, but do not correspond to the image you have of your God. However, your conciliatory tone here is much appreciated.

DAVID: As for lunch, the whole bush is our lunch, and your using it as a complaint is totally illogical.

dhw: This is perhaps the most ridiculous of all your efforts to defend your theory. The whole bush comprises millions of life forms, econiches, lunches, strategies, lifestyles and natural wonders, the vast majority of which are extinct and had no connection with us and our lunch. In your own words: “Extinct life has no role in current time” and “The current bush is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” How then can it be logical that the whole bush is our lunch?

DAVID: My sentence above is current tense. Stop distortions. Your quotes from me fits that view and are correct. No point in further response.

Your original statement is an obfuscation. The problem you cannot solve is why your God would have chosen to specially design the WHOLE bush - which includes all the extinct life forms and their lunches that had no connection with humans and their lunch - if his only purpose was to design current life forms and the current bush. It is the WHOLE bush of life that makes your theory illogical.

Back to theodicy and David’s theories: Using good viruses
DAVID: It must be remembered, in God's creation there are both good and bad viruses, and we have God-given brains to learn how to use them. And think of bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria.

You seem to have misunderstood the problem of theodicy, which is the incompatibility of “bad” things with the concept of God as an omnipotent, perfectly “good” being. Your solution to the problem appears to be along the lines of: “Thank you, God, for deliberately designing all the good viruses and bacteria that relieve some of the appalling suffering caused by your deliberate design of bad viruses and bacteria.” Not much of a solution, is it?