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

by dhw, Friday, June 13, 2025, 11:32 (21 hours, 11 minutes ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: You forget God is not like any human parent.

My comment was an explanation of how we use the word “entertainment”. It does not mean the same as “interest”.

DAVID: Your sadist comment does not deserve an answer!

Of course it deserves an answer if you are going to tell us that your view of God is the biblical one. There is no escaping the fact that according to the Bible he brutally murdered countless humans in episodes such as the Flood and Sodom & Gomorrah, and gave instructions to the Jews to murder non-Jews and destroy their cities. And if he regarded this as “entertainment”, then he was a sadist. If he wasn’t a sadist, he was still monstrously egotistical by our standards, and we have every right to make judgements by our standards. As you might have realized through the world of politics, power is not be equated with what we consider to be good!(NB I am NOT saying that he is a sadist. I am pointing out that the biblical version of God is open to such interpretations.)

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.

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

If he is “all-everything” then he is as evil as he is good. Very helpful!

dhw: And you still haven't told us how your wacky theories follow the "accepted" biblical form of your God.

DAVID: God's evolutionary method is inefficient in our human view, not God!

It is your personal view of your God’s evolutionary method which makes him inefficient. You may be right, but you seem to be unable to distinguish between fact and theory. It is NOT a fact that we were his only purpose, so he designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 organisms irrelevant to his only purpose. And do please tell us whereabouts in the Bible you found this theory and the description of him as messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

dhw: The biblical form doesn’t even accept the theory of evolution!

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

That is a correction of the “six days” translation. Please quote the modern translation where it says that all life forms, including humans, are descended from earlier life forms as opposed to their having been separately created.

Intelligence

dhw: Why do you exclude the opossum?

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?

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

It’s not “what if” if he’s actually seen it happen. And you still haven’t explained why you think your God specially designed him to be stupid and to need tuition, though he gave autonomous intelligence to all those insects, birds and other animals.

Theism v atheism

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.

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

Same answer: You propose an all-knowing mind as first cause. The atheist can start with a stroke of luck which produces the first primitive minds (the very first cells) which over thousands of millions of years design ever more complex minds. Sourceless genius versus one stroke of luck followed by evolution. You shut your eyes and jump one way. The atheist shuts his eyes and jumps the other way. The agnostic keeps his eyes open and prefers not to jump. We may never know who got it right.