A new synthesis: Four dimensions of Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, December 13, 2015, 15:28 (3050 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I have answered it a thousand times: nothing beyond bacteria was “required by Nature”, but dinosaurs, the weaverbird and the duckbilled platypus all showed up. I have indeed looked at the results of evolution, and I see an extraordinary variety of life, and I learn that 99% of the variety has died, and none of this fits in with what you call an “arrow of purpose”. 
DAVID: That is your analysis. You want reasons for all the variations of life. You want human-planning logic. I don't know that it is required. I admit, I look at the endpoint of evolution, and admit I do not fully understand the process.-If I am presented with a theory full of holes, of course I want reasons, just as you do when applying your human logic to alternatives.
 
dhw: You have even left out two hypotheses (2 and 3) in which humans did have a special place, but perhaps you can't bear the thought of your God not knowing everything right from the start. 
DAVID: I assume, if God is guiding evolution, He knows everything.-Why do you assume that? Haisch thinks God wanted to experience what it was like to live in the universe. So God wouldn't have known that in advance, would he? Some process theologians suggest that God is learning all the time: he is (in) the process of “becoming”. And if he created life as a great experiment, there would not be much point if he knew every result in advance. My hypotheses 2 and 3 allowed for guidance and God NOT knowing everything.
 
dhw: You are repeating my own acknowledgement that it is far-fetched. What you cannot see is that your own concept of an eternal sourceless know-it-all intelligence is equally far-fetched. That is why you need faith to believe in it.
DAVID: Not farfetched if one concludes it is the only answer to the 'why' question.-And so it is far-fetched if one concludes that it's not the only answer. And indeed it is far-fetched and not the only answer if one concludes it is far-fetched and not the only answer. Human logic at its finest.
 
dhw: I listened to Haisch's lecture, in which he claims repeatedly that consciousness creates reality and reality depends on consciousness (sometimes substituting observation for consciousness). .....I would say the mystery is the weirdness of the quantum world, but that doesn't make it any more real than the world we inhabit. We had the same discussion with Ruth Kastner. We all know that conscious perception is subjective, but that does not mean there is no such thing as objective reality .....
DAVID: Thank you for listening. His point of view represents many famous quantum scientists. Consciousness is the basis of reality, which explains how I developed my idea of a universal consciousness.-I understand why the idea appeals to you. What a pity the rock I stubbed my toe on didn't share Haisch's belief that consciousness creates reality. In the light of daily experience, for all its subjectivity, I would be reluctant to exclude matter and energy from any description of “the basis of reality”. BBella combines these with a sort of panpsychist intelligence, though without the qualities of consciousness and divinity. Maybe we should confine ourselves to Haisch's wonderfully helpless response to the simplest of questions: ”There is a mystery here.”