Theodicy: solution lies in definition of God (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 15, 2021, 12:10 (948 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] you have yourself told us he enjoys creating and he watches his creations with interest. So there’s one possible purpose. What’s wrong with it? You think a possible purpose is that your God wants us to admire his work, and maybe even to have a relationship with us. What’s wrong with that? Why must you use a negative term like “self-centred”, which denotes selfishness, lack of concern for others? […] Why must you turn enjoyment of creation into “pleasure himself”, which sounds almost like masturbation? Anyway, let’s hear some more purposes that you imagine might have motivated your purposeful God.

DAVID: What you have mentioned about my quotes concerning God's thoughts behind his actions are all my guesswork, which you always forget to mention.

Of course it's guesswork. All your proposals and mine are "guesswork". Do you now wish to tell us that your guesswork and your fixed beliefs and your theories are a load of rubbish because they're guesswork, and we shouldn't discuss them any more?

DAVID: My view of God is that He is obviously extremely clear as what He wants and produces it. We are His final result as He evolved the universe, the Earth, started and evolved life to final produce us.

I agree. I have no objection to the fact that we are the latest life form to have evolved. However, you have agreed that all my proposals are logical theistic explanations of what he wants and how he produces it– in contrast to your own theory/proposal/ guess that his one and only purpose was to produce us, and therefore he first produced countless life forms plus foods that had no connection with us.

DAVID: His image in my mind is nothing like your proposed thoughts He has as you present His personality. I don't need to list all the humanizing ways about God you imagine for Him. We cannot know if God does what He does for any sense of pleasing Himself in what He creates. We are then at a level of how humans think about themselves, and that cannot translate to God who is not human in any way. This is why I stay at a level of guesswork when thinking of His motives.

We cannot know anything about God, including whether he exists. All I have done is take up two of your guesses and suggested that they might reflect his purpose. Why do you dismiss your own guesses? And what do you mean by “not human in any way”, when you have agreed over and over again that he probably/possibly has thought patterns similar to ours, and you are sure that we “mimic” him in many ways?

DAVID: We are the endpoint of all God has done. We are/were His purpose. We are the only creation that can recognize His existence and what He did.

And there you go again. His purpose according to you was to create a creature who would recognize His existence and what He did. Why would he want that? And why, yet again, if we were his one and only purpose, did he specially design all the life forms that had no connection with us?