Ch 16, A mad world (A mad world)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 08:37 (4148 days ago) @ hyjyljyj

David: Why not accept intelligent design if you really feel that way?-Hyjyljyj: Good point; there might be various degrees of "really feeling that way". There are several gradations of agnosticism, including atheistic agnosticism and theistic (aka deistic) agnosticism, the latter being loosely defined as not knowing for sure, but LEANING toward, or preferring to believe in, the existence of an intelligent designer/a deity, and the former being the opposite. -I'd just like to comment on your mention of "deistic". The word has changed its meaning over the centuries, and one form of deism is the belief that the creator God does not interfere in human and natural affairs. Whether this is a sign of total indifference, of viewing the spectacle as entertainment, or that he is waiting to pounce on us with some grand dénouement is open to interpretation. If I did believe in a creator god, I think this detached form of deism would fit nicely into the picture of random joy and random suffering that seems to characterize the way of the world.-David: Einstein ended up as an agnostic.-So did Darwin, and I suspect that he would have been appalled at the manner in which his name and his ideas have been corrupted by atheistic distortions.
 
Hyjylyjy: Right now I'm at about 75-80% [presumably theistic].-I've mentioned out-of-body and near-death-experiences and the question of an afterlife in an earlier post, and I would have thought these too would be important for you, as some of them have so far defied materialistic interpretation. However, I'm certainly not going to try and push you off my fence ... I already value your company far too much to do that! The leap still requires you to "really feel" as well as to accept rationally that there is a self-aware "being" which has deliberately created and manipulated Planet Earth, every black hole, every past and present planet, star, sun, constellation, galaxy, and yet has also deliberately created and manipulated globules of matter so tiny that they can't be seen by the naked eye, and has fashioned them into living mechanisms for the reproduction, adaptation and innovation necessary for evolution. And while you are expected to argue that our own self-awareness could only be the product of design, you must accept that this super-self-awareness was not designed but has simply existed forever. Can you believe it?