God and Reality (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Saturday, June 29, 2013, 15:53 (3944 days ago) @ dhw


> http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2013/06/18/why-some-scientists-embrace-the-... 
> dhw: When I asked whether your God might not have created universes prior to this one, you answered: "we can suppose an infinite number of universes in past eternity." An infinite number of universes in the present and an infinite number of universes in the past makes little mathematical difference! The point which "you persist in missing" is that if you can suppose an infinite number of universes, it is illogical for you then to dismiss the very same concept as poppycock just because atheists need it for their own theory. If it is plausible for you, it has to be plausible for them.-Your question to me was what was God doing in the past before this universe? So I conjured up a supposition that he probably made other universes, since that is what we know He does. That supposition is not part of my belief system or vital to it. You are trying to make it seem as if it is. On the other hand, the atheists (other than that fool Vic Stenger, who has a book on why it does not look designed) are threatened by the designer universe concept. They need the hope, and hype, of multiverses to defend their position. They only know of one universe, just as I do, but have to invent from thin air and squirrely math a ray of hope from infinite universes. 
> 
> DAVID: I know the quote well. Loved to read about Holmes as a child. Are all three options equally improbable in your mind?
> 
> dhw: That is a very difficult question, which has forced me into a lengthy session of introspection! The short answer is yes. But it's a complicated yes. If I could focus solely on your unanswerable design argument, I would have to acknowledge that a designer is the least improbable. If I could focus solely on eternity, infinity, the impersonality and randomness of the universe as I see it, atheistic chance would win. If I could focus solely on the meeting of individual minds through discussion, literature, music, on individual psychic experiences, and on the vast range of individual intelligences throughout the human, animal and plant kingdoms, my relatively new (to me) atheistic panpsychist hypothesis would seem the least improbable. However, each hypothesis impinges on the others, and they are always in conflict. I simply do not have the wherewithal to grasp the whole and make sense of it. No-one has. That is why you need faith to jump into your box!-A very honest analysis. As I parse your words, the weakest consideration of yours is chance. The universe is not random, but follows rules and laws that make perfect sense to us. We have decoded much of the workings of this universe, granting as we have that its basis in the quantum realm is unyieldingly obscure. That leaves the design/designer option and the evolution of intelligence proposal. But panpsychism takes its cue from the recognition that intelligence and consciousness seem to pervade the universe. From my viewpoint the balance of improbability has design the winner.