New Miscellany 1 & 2: humanizing, intell., first cause etc. (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 12, 2025, 20:10 (21 hours, 33 minutes ago) @ dhw

Humanization

dhw: You said yourself that he must enjoy creating or he would not do it, and interest in his own creations does not imply entertainment. Would you describe a parent’s interest in their child’s activities as “entertainment”? But who knows? Your God might be a sadist! You've already made him look like an inefficient fool.

dhw: Not answered.

Answered: DAVID: You forget God is not like any human parent. Your sadist comment does not deserve an answer! God's evolutionary method is inefficient in our human view, not God!

dhw: Your God knows only one goal – to design us plus food – and his goal for doing so may be his very human desire for recognition and worship. Nowhere in the Bible will you find a God who inefficiently designs and culls 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his only goal, or a God who deliberately designs murderous viruses because they do more good than harm or – alternatively – has no control over the murderous viruses he inadvertently created.

As usual, you have ignored the whole of this section, though you claim that yours is the “accepted conceptual form of the Biblical God”! The biblical form doesn’t even accept the theory of evolution!

Wrong!!! Genesis assumes evolution in its 'days' which can be translated as eons.

dhw: And besides, who says the biblical God is the real God? The God of the OT demands worship, murders those who don’t worship him, and orders the Jews to do the same. Is that your God?

DAVID: Current interpretation has softened that view to remind us of the relatively savage times in which it was written.

dhw: So now you can pick and choose which parts of the Bible you believe, and that can only mean that it is not the Word of God but is the product of humans writing in the spirit of their times. And you still haven't told us how your wacky theories follow the "accepted" biblical form of your God.

It assumes God is all-everything(as described) as in recent translation of Genesis.

dhw: Why do you exclude the opossum?

DAVID: His instinctual reaction requires a conceptual beginning from a capable brain.

dhw: The beginning is a first-hand observation, and of course the conclusion drawn from that observation requires a capable brain. But according to you, the opossum sees the wolf walk away, but God has to descend from heaven and explain to him that he might imitate the dead opossum one day, and then maybe the wolf will walk away. Daft!

DAVID: You have imagined your brain in Otto the opossum.

dhw: I suppose if your God is inefficient enough to design 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his purpose, he’s probably also illogical enough to give himself the extra work of deliberately designing a stupid opossum who needs personal tuition in survival. But do please tell us why you think he refused to give Otto the “intelligent awareness” he gave to ants and crows and octopuses and various plants?

The play dead is a 'what-if' complex concept far more intellectual than crow or ant responses.

Under Milky Way not hitting Andromeda

dhw: Correct: either a sourceless conscious mind, or a sourceless mixture of matter and energy.

DAVID: That mixture can think, design? Poppycock.

dhw: The theory that an infinite number of combinations might eventually give rise to a primitive form of intelligence which in turn might evolve into increasingly complex forms is no more and no less poppycock than the theory that a supreme form of intelligence can simply be there without having come from any source. Both theories require blind faith if they are to be believed. But of course one must be closer to the truth than the other. We shall only know which one if there is a God and if he reveals himself.

The design evidence is irrefutable! A designing mind is required.