How God works (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 14, 2013, 13:06 (4121 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

This thread has moved far away from its original subject of epigenetics. I hope you will forgive me for using (abusing?) the mighty powers invested in me, and changing the heading of the last few posts, so that we can bring some sort of order to what is rapidly becoming a higgledy-piggledy bush. -TONY: By all indications, the creation of a 'New Earth' is in reference to a new society on all levels, particularly political and religious. The 1000 year reign of Christ appears to involve a mass cleanup of the planet and a (re-)education of the population. -But there will be no death, sorrow, crying or pain, according to the text you recommended to me. (See below)-TONY: It is the destination, the final goal, that determines the design constraints, not the limitations of the designer. [...] I am saying that God has a purpose for creating all of this, even if we do not know what that purpose is yet. That purpose, the ultimate goal, will have been the deciding factor for the design constraints that govern everything else. In other words, it could not have been done any other way and still achieved the ultimate purpose, whatever that may be. (Later: "God is extremely rational, by all accounts, so those that profess any level of faith in him should also strive to be rational and reasonable.")-DAVID: Thank you for this paragraph. I don't think dhw understands this. Design has to be appropriate for the goal. Teleology is always involved.-So God is perfectly capable of building a pain-free, sorrow-free, death-free world (see above), but the world he built has to be the way it is because that's the way he wanted it to be, though we don't know why. This argument consists of nothing but premises based purely on faith ... and there is nothing wrong with pure faith so long as it doesn't harm anyone. But I'm sure you will understand that, for someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in your particular version of God, such arguments seem neither rational nor reasonable.
 
TONY: Incapable is the wrong word. I simply think that creating a world without the POSSIBILITY of pain would have been unwise.-But the new earth will be free of pain, and that will not be unwise.-DHW: If not, I would like to know in your own words: 1) how you think the practical problems of resurrection will be solved? 
TONY: Which problems, specifically?-I listed them in my post of 3 January at 13.18 under "Love me or else" (Part One), 4th paragraph.-Dhw: I share your skepticism about existing political and religious systems, but only partially accept your claim that the earth would heal itself in short order if we would quit screwing around with it.-TONY: National Geographic (or Discover, can't remember) did a special that talked about this very thing. According to them, within 200 years most evidence of humanity would be gone. Within 2k years, it would be as if we never existed except for some extreme examples.-And so we would be back to a planet riddled with climatic upheavals, floods, droughts, ice ages, earthquakes, volcanoes, colliding asteroids, pain, species extinctions ... just as it was before we arrived. But we won't be around then to say it's all our fault.