The immensity of the universe (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, January 22, 2016, 18:16 (3015 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So let me get this right (please correct where necessary). In order to fulfil his purpose to produce humans, your God had to create billions of solar systems containing trillions of stars, millions of which had to blow themselves up (by chance) or be blown up (by God) so that the critical elements could form (by chance) or be created (by God) and travel higgledy-piggledy to Earth (by chance) or be directed to Earth (by God). (Or perhaps he programmed the millions of explosions and the journey to Earth of the critical elements.) Once they had arrived, God put them together to make the first cells, which he preprogrammed with the weaverbird's nest and every other innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct, so that life could continue until humans evolved (though they are so “different” that he may have created them separately). And humans are here, so the above must be right.
DAVID: That is how I view it!-Ugh, if he was powerful and clever enough to create all these billions of heavenly bodies that contained the critical elements, I'm surprised he couldn't just create the “critical elements” without the rest of the cosmic saga, but whaddoiknow?
 
dhw: Yes, my equally unlikely “bottom-up” panpsychist hypothesis, in which consciousness begins by chance through interaction between energy and matter, and from then on engineers its own self-designing evolution through experience and cooperation. Plenty of questions here too, but at least not as complicated as the supernovanovel narrated above.
DAVID: This is just chance all over again. Accept it and don't accept it as you dance back and forth. Still only two choices.-Just a reduction in the amount of chance required, since it dispenses with the usual vast accumulation of lucky breaks that some atheists believe in. The concept of comparatively simple consciousness arising by chance and then evolving through experience and cooperation is no more fantastic than that of a single conscious mind that creates and controls billions of solar systems and is, and always has been, magically just “there”. Incidentally, you will have noted that the above supernova scenario has your God possibly leaving an ENORMOUS amount to chance.