The Sermon Part 2 (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Thursday, July 31, 2008, 08:41 (5960 days ago) @ David Turell

As our "latest postings" section is useful for people trying to catch up, once again I'll try to save space on it by combining responses. - George says his atheism is "strictly based on the evidence" and considers his evaluation of it to be objective. David has given you a direct answer, to which I would simply add that there is no evidence that abiogenesis (crucial to the case for atheism) happened or could happen. Even if intelligent scientists eventually managed to produce life, it would only prove that intelligence can produce life. - David says I have raised the "problem of evil". I have actually raised two problems ... evil and suffering. I was questioning the basis of faith in a loving God, since all we have to go on is the mixed world as God may or may not have created it. Carl's point about humans coming on the scene so late seems to me like another piece of evidence against the anthropocentric interpretation of creation. One wonders how God's loving nature would have manifested itself during the millions of years of dinosaur (not to mention bacteria) dominance. - However, David says that "part of the problem is the way we want to define God as 'extremely loving' or 'exceedingly loving'. We don't know what God's attributes are." I agree. You also say that panentheism "is simply the belief that God exists within and without the universe", but "panentheism allows for a personal loving God". In that case it must equally allow for an impersonal, unloving God. If we do not attribute any qualities at all to God, panentheism leaves us only a designer label away from agnosticism, and as I suggested in an earlier post, design becomes virtually irrelevant unless one has a humanized concept of the designer. An impersonal God without attributes means that we're on our own, what we have now is all we're going to get, and when we die it's all over anyway, so one might as well be an atheist. Not a problem in itself, but I'm wondering whether panentheism actually gets us anywhere. - Perhaps we should stop referring in this way to 'God', since the word automatically brings associations. Past discussions on the forum have, however, failed to come up with a satisfactory alternative. Any suggestions?