The Mind of God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, October 15, 2010, 15:30 (5152 days ago) @ jclinch

JOHN CLINCH: Hi, dhw. It's been a while since I visited this site and I'm delighted to see that the old controversies are still very much alive.-Hi John, it's good to hear from you again. The controversies will never end, but there's a lot to be learned as we keep circling round the big blank space!-JOHN: Of course, if you accept that "God" is a being with a "mind" situated in time (though, conspicuously, not in space it seems) then you are forced to consider all sorts of anthropocentic notions like "what was He doing before creation?" and "why didn't He speed up evolution?" Which, of course, leads to absurd paradoxes. The very use of a personal pronoun at all is, in my view, revealing since it demonstrates an unstated premise that that God is a bit like us. [...]
The fundamental error, in my respectful view, is anthropomorphism. If God can be said to exist in any meaningful way, the only thing of we can be sure is that God is nothing like us and is beyond anything that we can conceivably imagine. Moreover, God is surely beyond any human notion of volition, morality, goodness, justice, mercy or any of the other attributes that the world's monotheisms typically ascribe to God. And "He" certainly can't get bored!-As you've seen, this particular thread is devoted not to the question of whether God exists, but what he might be like if he does. I haven't really bothered to differentiate between God/he and a UI/it because we all know what we're talking about, so it's just a matter of convenience.-I think it's a perfectly valid argument to say we haven't a clue and so there's no point in speculating, which I presume is the bottom line of your post. But it seems to me equally valid to build on certain premises. If life is the product of a deliberate act of creation, it does not seem unreasonable to assume that the creator had a purpose. Nor does it seem unreasonable to suppose that whatever has been created may well in some way reflect the creator, e.g. that a deliberate act of creation leading to consciousness might indicate a similar form of consciousness in the creator. Just as a computer's ability to remember, store, calculate, process and use information would be unthinkable if humans did not possess those abilities, it seems reasonable to suppose that a designer of humans would also have them. This line of reasoning leads to questions you consider to be "absurd paradoxes". They are if you begin with the premise of which you are so sure, i.e. that God is nothing like us. But you have no more grounds for your premise than conventional monotheists have for theirs. How do you know God can't get bored? How do you know he's beyond any of the attributes ascribed to him by monotheists? -This particular discussion, though, is only indirectly about attributes. I'm questioning the relevance of God to us as individuals. To do that, we have to try to read his mind, to fathom his purpose and his nature. If he has no mind/purpose/nature, then he has no relevance to us ... end of discussion. If it's pointless trying to find any common ground between him and us ... also end of discussion. If there is a possibility of common ground, we can only speculate on what it might be ... beginning of discussion.