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

by dhw, Sunday, July 11, 2021, 12:26 (1229 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You claim that his plan to produce us and our food was first of all not to produce us and our food but to produce lots of life forms and foods that had no connection with us – and this in spite of the fact that he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and always in control. It is possible that your God designed all the steps of evolution, but it is not logical to claim that the purpose of all the steps of evolution that led to all the life and food forms which have disappeared and which had no connection with humans was to enable your God to design humans and their food. You continue to take us round in circles in your effort to avoid admitting that this theory is illogical, even though you keep admitting that you can’t explain it.

DAVID: Once again, I don't try to explain why God evolved us. It is your problem.

Once again, that is not my problem, and as always you edit your theory to leave out those parts which contradict one another. The problem is not confined to why he evolved [= designed] US! The problem is why, if we and our lunch were his one and only purpose, why did he specially design all the life forms and lunches that had no connection with us?

DAVID: You may try to describe my God as human, but those are just terms, not real organized impressions of His personality, but the way you describe my God is exactly my view! Knows exactly what He is doing, exact goals in mind.

Of course they are terms. How else can you describe a personality? I don’t know what you mean by “organized impressions”. You offer descriptive terms, and I offer descriptive terms, and yours are every bit as humanizing as mine. Therefore “humanizing” is no reason to reject a theory.

DAVID: Sure He is a control freak in human terms at the level of evolving exactly what He wants, while yours muddles along with experimenting and watching wandering free-for-alls.

As always, you miss the point that I offer alternative views, and you simply try to find deprecatory ways of describing them. A scientist or inventor experimenting with different ideas in order to create something that has never existed before sounds totally positive to me, but you call it “muddling along”. A God who learns new things and develops new ideas does not seem to me to be weak or namby-pamby. You are sure that your God enjoys creating and watching his creations, but you simply refuse to conceive of the possibility that the enjoyment and interest might be enhanced by creating a “free-for-all” rather than a puppet show in which he pulls all the strings.

DAVID: We will always disagree. Stop bringing up your objections and I'll stop also.

It’s not possible to stop so long as you continue to insist that your God designed every life form plus lunch etc. for the sole purpose of producing us, although nearly all of those life forms and lunches had no connection with us. Your theory crops up in at least half the topics we discuss, from natural wonders such as ant bridges and weaverbirds’ nests through to the development of the human brain. Your fixed concept of God’s purpose and nature leads you to reject every alternative theistic theory of evolution for the feeblest of reasons – that although they all fit in with life’s history, they entail human attributes that are different from the human attributes you think he has. See “Theodicy: bad bacteria seen differently” for an interesting development of this issue.