More Denton: A new book (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, March 06, 2016, 16:40 (2975 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: BBella's ATI to me still is a version of God.
dhw; Your God is becoming more and more diffuse. How about this, then, for a “version of God”: ALL THAT IS, consisting of energy and matter, some of which is organic and conscious, and some of which is inorganic and probably without consciousness. Then we really needn't bother about where it all came from, or how and when consciousness arose. After all, if God just is (no known source), then ALL THAT IS just is. But maybe, on second thoughts, we should ditch the word “God”, because so many people associate that with a single, conscious, eternal being which deliberately created ALL THAT IS.-DAVID: At least you definitely accept that something is eternal and has consciousness. Something with consciousness could then plan our reality, design not chance.-Neatly twisted. ALL THAT IS is in the present tense. I do accept that energy and matter may be eternal. SOME of it is NOW organic and conscious, but the definition explicitly ignores considerations of how and when consciousness arose. That is why I end up by proposing that we drop the word “God” altogether, because as you make abundantly clear in your response to BBella, theists like yourself insist that your ALL THAT IS (your God) deliberately created ALL THAT IS, which clearly makes no sense (see below). There is therefore no way BBella's ATI can be called a “version of God” unless you strip God of his individual, eternal, creative, purposeful mind.-BBella: If there is ONE Conscious being that planned and created All That Is, would that suggest that the ONE being came before All That Is and would had to have created All That Is from no-thing? Is that even probable/possible?
DAVID: Something is eternal. You cannot get something from a true nothing. Whatever is eternal created ATI.-“Created” is a loaded word, and I think you have missed the point of BBella's hyphenated no-thing. If what is eternal is energy and matter, ATI is derived from energy and matter. However, if what is eternal is a disembodied consciousness which uses energy and matter as what you call “raw materials”, BBella is right: it would have had to create energy and matter from consciousness, which is not a “thing”. How can consciousness simply exist without having anything to be conscious of, apart from itself, and then create the raw materials of energy and matter out of its no-thing? But of course the God you imagine has unlimited powers, and for you that explains whatever can't be explained.-BBELLA: If the creator of life as we know it used available material to create, that would have to mean that consciousness too was/is a part of that available material. If we are made from the same stuff as our creator, what makes us different than our creator?
DAVID: We are made "in the image" through our consciousness. We just don't have the same intellectual capacity.-An excellent justification for what you call the “anthropomorphization” of God, if we are in his image but just not as clever as he is. You “explain” the higgledy-piggledy history of life by proposing that it was preprogrammed or personally manipulated by your God for the purpose of creating humans, and you “view God as a tough-love parent.” How anthropomorphic can you get? Furthermore, “we should solve problems by ourselves, by being self-reliant”. And yet you dismiss as “anthropomorphic” the proposal that the higgledy-piggledy history might be explained by your God creating life as an experiment or entertainment in which all organisms either solve or do not solve problems by themselves, by being self-reliant. Double standards, sir, double standards!