Theism Doesn't Ultimately Explain Anything

[MikeF]

Sorry for the late response. I missed the alert that you replied.

How can they be the same entity?

They can be the same if a sentient assigner assigns a purpose to itself. If I assign myself the purpose of becoming a doctor and healing the sick, I am both the assigner and the subject to which purpose is being assigned.

This is interesting, so what about evolution? It seems to be a mindless process with no intentions or goals yet our body parts seem to have purposes. What's your take on that conundrum? If it's mindless then it can't assign purpose yet our eyes for example, seem to have been designed for the purpose of sight.

Perhaps it comes down to definition. As with many words, there can often be more than one meaning and use. If purpose requires a sentient agent as the assigner, then perhaps another word, like function, would be applied an action or role that has no assigner. In common usage though, I think purpose can be used both ways, to imply an assigner or to be synonymous with function with no assigner implied. It is my understanding that you are implying purpose with an assigner.

With evolution, especially bi-sextual reproduction, there is a constant shuffling of the gene pool, so there is a randomizing element(beyond simple error in transcription or other insults to DNA). And every outcome either survives to reproduce or it does not. There is no mindful culling in nature. It seems hard to imagine how a desired outcome could be achieved under such randomizing conditions.

 

[Magical Wand]

Thanks for this. Once I got to the third route to agency and saw it was just the teleological/design arguments I was like “pfff.”

Yeah, that's so true. I felt like this shouldn't be there since it is a separate argument.

I didn’t expect it from Plantinga. Usually his responses were thoughtful and almost even self-deprecating in that he would offer his insights on their weaknesses. Then he was just like “well, maybe powerful non-human intelligences were responsible.”

Lol. His response sounds ridiculous. But I remember listening to a lecture where the professor said it doesn't matter if the response sounds silly (and he agreed the demon response sounds silly). He argued the point is that as long as the response saves the theology from logical incoherence, it should be counted as a sound response. Because the goal is show its coherence. Anyway, it still sounds silly.

 

[Meow Mix]

Lol. His response sounds ridiculous. But I remember listening to a lecture where the professor said it doesn't matter if the response sounds silly (and he agreed the demon response sounds silly). He argued the point is that as long as the response saves the theology from logical incoherence, it should be counted as a sound response. Because the goal is show its coherence. Anyway, it still sounds silly.

Yes, I understand the goal is to defeat the logical problem. It's just not an approach I would take personally if I were a theist. Maybe it's just that I have this intuition that responses should feel satisfying, but who could even define what that means, I guess.

In any case the Toy World objection still defeats the demons response: God could create the laws of the universe such that they couldn't do their mysterious nonsense.