Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, April 08, 2021, 13:50 (1115 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The analogy has nothing to do with planned steps. You keep telling us that a God who designs everything for one specific purpose (H. sapiens) is not “human”, whereas a God who designs a free-for-all (an ever changing variety of life forms) is “very human” and doesn’t know where he’s going. If I set out to design something unpredictable, I know where I’m going: the kaleidoscope and the ever changing variety are both precisely what I want. Once more: why is this “very human”, whereas wanting and creating nothing but humans plus food supply is not at all “human”?

DAVID: The bold states your God does not know where the end point will be. Yes it is purposeful without a desired end point, so your God is goalless in that approach.

dhw: Playing with words. If my goal is to enjoy every moment of my life, how does that come to mean that my life is goalless? Your God can also have a purpose/goal and not have a desired end point but simply be interested in what his amazing invention will lead to. And still you avoid telling us why wanting humans is not “humanizing” but wanting a free-for-all is.

DAVID: I'm deadly serious, not word playing. How you live your life has nothing to do with having distinct goals in a future. A free-for-all advance is goalless in itself. It doesn't know where it is going nor does God watching it. Yours is a humanizing approach to God as I view it. God purposely creates, apparently something about Him you don't understand, as your free-for-all can wander in any direction.

Some humans live their lives with very specific goals for their future: to become rich, to raise a family, to play football for England, to write a successful novel….some even have goals for each day. It is a very human trait to have a goal (and is probably a darn sight healthier than just drifting aimlessly through life!). But I’ll take one of the above goals, as an illustration of the point as well as offering the chance of a pun or two if you want word play! In a football match, the goal is to score goals and win the game. But what would be the point if you already knew the result? The inventor of the sport did not want anyone including himself to know the result beforehand. He “purposely created” an activity that was open-ended – apparently something you don’t understand: that open-endedness can be a purpose in itself. Your own example could be your always-in-total-control God’s creation of free will, but I never hear you talk of this "purposely created" “free-for-all” behaviour as “humanizing” God. In brief, if your God WANTED a free-for-all (unpredictable football match) instead of a puppet show in which he pulled all the strings, he would have "purposely created" it, and the one is no more and no less "human" than the other.

DAVID: My interpretation of God's human goal is obviously not allegorical. My assumptions as to how He might have arrived, in His thoughts, at that goal must be.

dhw: Even if you say that maybe he designed humans so that they could recognize or enjoy his work, what does such a statement represent “allegorically”? If wanting to create sapiens is not an allegory, why is wanting to create a free-for-all an allegory, and how is it allegorical to question why he might have deliberately designed bad bugs and viruses? This is a pointless digression, but for you perhaps a useful way to avoid answering awkward questions.

DAVID: Nothing in your entry has anything to do with the use of allegorical terms in describing God. Allegorical terms are used to describe God, Himself as an allegorical personage, not His intentions or plans. The difference is very clear.

Nothing in this whole discussion has anything to do with allegorical terms, unless you regard the analogies we use to illustrate our theories as allegories. This thread only concerns your theory of evolution and the problem of theodicy, both of which hinge on his intentions or plans. All this talk of “allegory” with your long quote about interpreting the Bible is nothing but a red herring. Please get back to issues and tell us at last why it is not humanizing for your God to want only to create humans, to enjoy creating and possibly to want recognition, but it is “very human” for him want to create a free-for-all and to create BECAUSE he enjoys creating.