Tony\'s God (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 17:56 (4728 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Conclusion: the worst way to build a reasonable belief system is to start with biblical teachings. That is why earlier on this website I mentioned my 'third way'. dhw is frightened by what he reads about God in the OT. dhw doesn't like evil; God should have made the world 'perfect' in his mind. No, God had to give us free will. We would be puppets otherwise. Making this Earth requires Earthquakes that kill, and so on. Theodicy is addressed in many ways.

Agree about the bible, disagree about dhw and the OT God. I’m an agnostic, remember! And I don’t need biblical myths to tell me about floods, mass exterminations, the slaughter of the innocents. Agree that I don’t like evil – who does? – but disagree that my mind says God should have made the world perfect. Wrong starting-point. I haven’t a clue about how worlds can be made, and nor has anyone else. But if God exists, I’d like to know what he’s like, and that’s the starting-point of these discussions. The only evidence of which I have first-hand experience is the nature of the one world I know. Since I see it as a mixture of this and that, it seems not unreasonable to conclude that God may be a mixture of this and that. In discussions with Tony, I emphasize this because he emphasizes that. I have stated expressly, however, that basically I identify with your neutrality.

DAVID: Clean out the cobwebs, clear your mind and the existence of God is logical. There has to be a first cause.

Ah, but that first cause, instead of being an eternal and universal intelligence, may be an eternal, mindless, impersonal, ever changing universe. Theology is addressed in many ways.