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

by dhw, Saturday, July 03, 2021, 09:09 (1238 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We are not attack dogs. You have your vision of God and I have mine.

dhw: I do not have one vision of God – I offer alternatives.

DAVID: Which are always weak and humanized. We will never agree on who God is.

dhw: It’s as if our correspondence concerning “weak” and “humanized” had never taken place. I see nothing weak, for instance, in a God who deliberately creates a self-generating bush of life forms which he can watch with interest. I do not know why this should be regarded as more “humanized” than your God, who deliberately controls every development in evolution, which he watches with interest.

DAVID: Just shows you do not understand my humanizing argument. Our correspondence never cleared that up. Simply a God who gives up control is a humanized God. God always knows what He wants to achieve and does it. That is the God I believe in.

If I believed in God (but I do not disbelieve in him), I would also believe that he knows what he wants to achieve and does it. One of my theories is that he wanted to create the ever changing bush of life, with all its unexpected branches and strategies and natural wonders that we know exist and existed, and that in order to do so, he gave cells the intelligence to design all the life forms and behaviours which make them so interesting both to us and to him. Like yourself, I believe that we may have inherited thought patterns and emotions from him, or as you put it more recently: “I am sure we mimic him in many ways (…) but just how much is unknown.” Of course it is, but in view of your own certainty that we mimic him, it is patently absurd to dismiss a theory that fits in logically with the history of life, merely on the grounds that it involves thought patterns and emotions similar to our own.

dhw: […] you dodge the question of why, if his only goal was humans plus lunch, he specially designed all the past life forms and lunches that had no connection with humans.

DAVID: And my constant response is God evolved us from Archaea, which, if you accepted that concept, would remove all your objections. I can't answer why He chose that method as answered ad nauseum. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: And that is the nub of the whole debate! We both accept that ALL life forms descended from Archaea, but you claim that he specially designed ALL life forms (plus lunch), although he only wanted one (plus lunch). It is this latter part of your theory – the one you can’t explain – which I object to, and the objection is not removed by our agreement that all forms of life are descended from Archaea.

DAVID: The bold is your constant confusion about my view. God had a goal of producing humans, and understood how to do it as shown in the history of evolution as He DESIGNED it. I believe in a DESIGNER. THAT is my EXPLANATION. What is not explained?

What is not explained is precisely what you have just admitted you can’t explain: namely, his “method” of designing humans plus lunch by first designing millions of life forms and lunches that had nothing to do with humans plus lunch. The alternatives I have offered you all involve a DESIGNER, and you have agreed that all of them logically cover the part of your theory that you cannot explain.

Back to theodicy and David’s theories: Using good viruses
DAVID: […] It is possible God is just creating for the sake of creating, nothing more.

dhw: You hope that science will one day prove that your God’s special design of what we believe to be bad will turn out to be good. However, your last comment is excellent news. If it is possible that he is just creating for the sake of creating, it must also be possible that he is creating because – as you have said before – he enjoys doing so and is interested in his creations. Since no one knows his nature, thoughts and purposes, it must therefore also be possible that his reason for creating is to provide himself with an activity he enjoys as well as developments and events that he will find interesting.

DAVID: Again, back to a really human form of a God, all pure guesswork ignoring the magnitude of His creations.

dhw: Absolutely nothing to do with the magnitude of his creations, which is all the more reason to believe that he must enjoy creating, and enjoyment of creation might therefore be his motive for creating the process of evolution.

DAVID:God does not have to be in a position of 'must enjoy'. Why humanize Him?

"Must" here is a deduction, not a compulsion, and why not? How can you possibly talk about purposes without “humanizing” him? And do you honestly imagine your God as an emotionless mind simply creating without any feelings – although elsewhere you have expressed your certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in what he creates? When pushed, you even come up with possible “humanized” reasons why he wanted to design humans (see “Miscellany” under “Neutron star”), and you have him kindly providing possible antidotes to the diseases his specially created viruses and bacteria have created - because he has "good intentions".
You object to my "humanizing" him because some of my humanizations conflict with your own, though you can find no fault in the logic which explains those parts of your theories which you can't explain.