More Denton: A new book (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 07, 2016, 15:11 (2974 days ago) @ dhw


> DAVID: At least you definitely accept that something is eternal and has consciousness. Something with consciousness could then plan our reality, design not chance.
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> dhw: 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.-I know it is present tense. And what you skip over is simply the fact that God is also present tense. Yes, He is eternal, but He is present and part of ATI, which He preceded.-> DAVID: Something is eternal. You cannot get something from a true nothing. Whatever is eternal created ATI.
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> dhw: “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.-How do you know God's consciousness is disembodied? I consider it as a fully organized construction called God, conscious of itself and of its intentions. -> DAVID: We are made "in the image" through our consciousness. We just don't have the same intellectual capacity.
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> dhw: 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!-You can have your God entertaining Himself. He doesn't need the TV, He's got us! What a lightweight view of the possibilities of God's personality. But then again you seek answers with no loose ends, when all we've got is loose ends and no explanation for humans arising from the struggling organisms of life with capacities well beyond the necessity of functionality.