If God exists, why did he create life? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, December 11, 2010, 03:30 (5095 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Saturday, December 11, 2010, 03:37

Thank you for responding. I did indeed expect opposition from you, although I'm quite surprised at its nature. The praise element was the tiniest of asides ("perhaps God gets a little thrill of vanity when churchgoers praise him") in the context of his not intervening. The whole of my argument centres on the motive of entertainment. You have begun your critique with humans, whereas I have carefully prepared the way by asking what God might have got out of dinosaurs ... a difficult question for those who think anthropocentrically. I've incorporated the "simple joy of creation", through my various references to creative artists and experimentation with different forms. Simple joy, complicated joy, saints and sinners ... it's all part of what I mean by entertainment. "To see if a simple consciousness could reach the potential that It possesses": what for? To satisfy his own curiosity ... all part of the entertainment. "To share the gift of consciousness" ... if you like, but since there is no communication, what would be the purpose of the gift? A conscious form of life offers a far wider variety of pleasures. What makes you think that entertainment is all wanton destruction? Have you never enjoyed a love story? Besides, I've included "love, beauty, happiness, joy", although it's true that I've suggested these are "almost certainly" outweighed by the suffering. I think the negative perspective is your own imposition, and in any case the positive attributes do not contradict my scenario in any way. So what exactly is your objection to life conceived as a show created by God for his own enjoyment, with all its good and all its bad?
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For me I suppose it is a matter of perspective, and perhaps imperfect language. When I hear the word entertainment, I think of television, movies, books, music, games, shows, etc. To me that is something completely different from the satisfaction and joy a person gets from creating something. So in my mind, they are two separate and distinct categories. My apologies if I misunderstood your own perspective. -My own personal views can not be brought into line really with this line of reasoning. You have effectively removed all possible causes and motivations from the equation except the ones that you have been trying to promote, i.e. entertainment and experimentation, by removing any possibility of an end goal. You ask what a UI possibly could have gained by creating the Dinosaurs which implies a) that there were no future plans of which that was just one step, b) that the UI must operate under purely selfish motivation, and c)ignores the fact that long before the Dinosaurs there was the small matter of the creation of the universe, which, when compared to life, must have been like watching paint dry.-Basically, you might as well ask Di Vinci what he got out of painting the Mona Lisa's hair with the stipulation that he was not allowed to reference the rest of the painting in his reply. I know I keep coming back to this point over and over again, to the point of sounding like a broken record, even to myself. But you simply can not take any one thing and completely remove all the context surrounding it.