Hi The existence of the dinosaurs does not fit in the anthropocentric perspective of an earthly paradise. If the initial purpose of the God of the Bible was that man was the center of the world, what function would have played the dinosaurs? The Mormon religion believes that after death people reincarnates in ''worlds'' with different levels of spirituality, some more paradisiacal than others, in proportion to compliance of religion rules. But, if a man is killed by a lightning, what transgressions he could have done in his previous life to deserve such punishment? Maybe he electrocuted some innocent person? But, what if at that time there was no electricity yet?
I'm going to primarily address this generally so as to avoid the mire, limitations, and problems of a specific culture's take on _x_. Which is to say, one might first have to spend weeks trying to rescue the latter from itself (fix the belief system, etc) before ever getting back around to the primary focus. Since this is a science board, I'm also taking the route of Dawkin's "natural gods / creators" below [quote at bottom] rather than dealing with a "non-compromised deity that is not subservient to the concept of cause or origin".
Patience here: I've got to go through the following (concerning the actual title of this thread) to get back to the issue in the body of your post as to why gods / archilects would set up a reality and life for their creations in seemingly irrational, immoral, or over-elaborate ways.
To declare ANY conceiving of "afterlife" to be an impossible venture in terms of its coherency seems like another dogmatic conclusion itself derived from familiar furniture (especially of the past) rather taking into account exotic mutables and contingencies (especially those of the future).
For example, if an alternative technological substrate for realizing biological organisms fully emerges in the future -- like simulated people in virtual environments eventually becoming complicated enough to qualify for being "alive" and also receiving the "dead" designation after body functioning ceases... Then preservation of their memories and somatic information becomes a "simple" enough affair in the context of more impressive technological "miracles" having already been instantiated. While _x_ deceased individual is being buried / cremated in its original Level_1 world or whatever, his/her template (data form) is enjoying re-activation in a new body at Level_2 "afterlife world" where resurrections are the normal source for its population.
Philosophical objections concerning
"Why would transcendent creators devise such over-elaborate, dramatic, round-a-bout hoops for the invented counterparts of their ancestors to tediously leap through?" can be dismissed by both empirical circumstances and potential exposure of lazy intellectual capacity in regard to conceiving a wider array of reasons and possibilities. Observation-wise: Humans have been authoring crazy, winding plots for their stories ever since hunter-gatherer days. For the sake of engendering mystery, suspense, adventurous thrills, illustrating principles, etc. Which includes having their characters suffer and travail in the course of some eventual redemption or victory. They continue this with the computer games that would be stepping stones to sophisticated innerspace realities of tomorrow.
IOW, where did this (absurd?) notion of "gods should be reasonable and kind" ever come from, in light of how most mythological denizens are as emotionally unstable, immoral, or demented as the lesser creatures they lord over? Even when declared "ideal" by this or that cult they're still contended by others to contradict those ascriptions.
Ironically, a more sensible prediction (in terms of how things actually play out empirically as opposed to abstract expectations) is that "gods" and archilects which evolve and engineer themselves into existence over time are likely to have many characteristics, tendencies, and traditions of their primeval predecessors passed on to them. Again, the very momentum of computer games being designed to be "exciting" rather than boringly utopian -- so as to attract users -- ensures an "unsatisfying to the rational & moral mind" genre of innerspace worlds developing in the future. Borrowing themes and setups from the fictional entities and landscapes of past cultures, religions, and fantasy writers.
It's irrelevant whether we ourselves are in such a situation. It just takes the concept of "afterlife" being viable in some inter-consistent framework or literally being realized in some where / when location to dispel a dogma about it being impossible (both as a claim of all species of the idea being incoherent within their own internal descriptions, and a claim of none of them ever / anywhere becoming the case ["real"]).
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MICHAEL POWELL:
After two hours of conversation, Professor [Richard] Dawkins walks far afield. He talks of the possibility that we might co-evolve with computers, a silicon destiny. And he’s intrigued by the playful, even soul-stirring writings of Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist. In one essay, Professor Dyson casts millions of speculative years into the future. Our galaxy is dying and humans have evolved into something like bolts of superpowerful intelligent and moral energy.
Doesn’t that description sound an awful lot like God?
“Certainly,” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s highly plausible that in the universe there are God-like creatures.” He raises his hand, just in case a reader thinks he’s gone around a religious bend. “It’s very important to understand that these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific progression of incremental evolution.”
Could they be immortal? The professor shrugs.
“Probably not.” He smiles and adds, “But I wouldn’t want to be too dogmatic about that.” --A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy; Profiles in Science, New York Times, Sept 19, 2011
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NANCEY MURPHY: Well this is a very interesting point of contact between science and Christianity. It may look to the outsider as though Christians have been dualists throughout their history, continue to be dualists…
ROBERT KUHN: Dualists meaning…
NANCEY MURPHY: Believing in not just a body, but some other component, generally called the soul, but the concept of soul at certain points in history is equivalent to the concept of mind. So a dualist is a person has been thought to be essential to Christianity. Now it looks as though the neuroscientists are coming along and they’re saying, ah, there is no soul, in fact there is no substantial mind. It’s actually the brain or the nervous system that does all of the things that were once attributed to soul or mind. So it looks like yet another place where science encroaches and religion has to step back. But in the, in the liberal half of Christianity, those who have a higher degree in theology are almost all physicalists.
MICHAEL SCHERMER: Really?
ROBERT KUHN: Physicalist meaning that there is no…
NANCEY MURPHY: We’re just bodies.
ROBERT KUHN: There is no non-physical element required to make us human beings.
NANCEY MURPHY: We’re just bodies. That’s right.
MICHAEL SCHERMER: Now when you’re resurrected, how old will you be?
NANCEY MURPHY: 30.
MICHAEL SCHERMER: Really? You have an answer.
NANCEY MURPHY: Augustine thought about that, that’s when you reach the height of your powers but before you start to disintegrate. --Can Web Believe in Both Science and Religion?; "Closer To The Truth" episode
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As you’ve pointed out, science has made it extremely hard to posit something like the soul that exists independent of the body, or a mind that exists independent of physical processes in the brain. Some would say the dualistic view was never a biblical view to begin with, though it has long been part of Christian tradition. Do you agree?
NANCEY MURPHY: I follow New Testament scholar James Dunn in holding that the biblical authors were not interested in cataloguing the metaphysical parts of a human being -- body, soul, spirit, mind. Their interest was in relationships. The words that later Christians have translated with Greek philosophical terms and then understood as referring to parts of the self originally were used to designate aspects of human life. For example, spirit refers not to an immaterial something but to our capacity to be in relationship with God, to be moved by God’s Spirit.
It is widely agreed that the Hebrew Bible presents a holistic account of human nature, somewhat akin to contemporary physicalism. The New Testament authors certainly knew various theories of human nature, including dualism, but it was not their purpose to teach about this issue. --Nature’s God: An Interview with Nancey Murphy; The Christian Century, (December 27, 2005, pp. 20-26.)