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

by David Turell , Friday, July 16, 2021, 18:52 (1224 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You know my theory fully, but you always complain if I leave something out.

dhw: Of course I do, because it’s the COMBINATION of your beliefs that is illogical. You always focus on one aspect of your theory that makes sense in itself, and leave out the rest. For argument’s sake, I am accepting that God exists. We agree that humans evolved from bacteria, it is possible that humans were your God’s goal, it is possible that he designed everything, and it is possible that he is all-powerful and knows exactly what he wants and how to get it.

Makes sense and we agree. The rest is nonsense:

dhw: What does not make sense is that if humans plus lunch were his one and only goal, and he is all-powerful etc., why would he design all the life forms etc. that had no connection with humans plus lunch?You have no idea why, and so you keep dodging the question.

Humans were an endpoint for God, not your tunnel-visioned interpretation of His thoughts. I have always viewed your take as desiring God to do direct creation. Why He wanted us to appear as a the result of evolution and why He chose to evolve us as His choice of method, each of us can only guess at. That 'I have no idea why' does not negate the theory.

DAVID: You simply refuse to accept the obvious. We each think of God totally differently.

dhw: Of course that is obvious, and we question each other’s views. So please tell me why you think experimentation, learning, having new ideas, or creating precisely what one wants to create – all of which provide logical theistic explanations for the history of evolution – should be regarded as weak, wishy-washy and bumbling. The terms have the same meaning, whether you apply them to humans or to God.

DAVID: Obvious. Your God's actions are the actions of humans, not of a determined purposeful God who knows His goals in advance.

dhw: One of my theories – all of which you agree give a logical explanation of life's higgledy-piggledy bush – offers you a determined purposeful God whose goal is to create the ever changing bush by inventing a mechanism that will produce all the changes without his intervention (unless he wishes to dabble). The experimenting God would also be determined and purposeful, and would be experimenting in order to fulfil his goal. The learn-as-you-go God, coming up with new ideas, has the goal of finding out what happens if...The fact that all three options can be mimicked by humans does not answer my question why you consider them all to be weak, wishy-washy and bumbling.

Your theories about God as expressed above create a personality for a God who comes across to me as you state: " weak, wishy-washy and bumbling". That is the picture I imagine. Sorry, but you can 't change my mind. My vision of God and His actions is totally different.

DAVID: What I do know is God is not human in any way, while you constantly apply a humanistic form to His thoughts.

dhw: How can you possibly “know” that? Read your own words: “I am sure we mimic him in many ways…but just how much is unknown.” “In many ways” now becomes “in no way”. You are sure that we have certain traits in common, but you know we don’t. […]

DAVID:[…] My point is we cannot know if He is human in any way at all. This results in our separate visions of God as totally different.

dhw: Nobody can possibly know God’s nature, and so you have no right to claim that you “know God is not human in any way”. That claim becomes doubly absurd when you also tell us you are sure we humans “mimic him in many ways”. You are sure we do, but you know we don’t! It’s time you dropped this whole “humanizing” argument, since it is impossible to discuss God’s nature without speculating on attributes that we may have inherited from him (if he exists).

Please stick with "nobody can know God's nature". That is true, beyond any doubt. As a result I try as little humanizing as possible. Realize all the rest is guesswork, and we can go on discussing guesswork if you wish but it is not productive especially since we both view God's personality so differently.