Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 16, 2009, 13:08 (5570 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George has responded to the image of me in my ignorance trying to combine the ingredients for life in a laboratory, followed by the image of the ingredients trying to combine themselves without me. - Firstly, my thanks for a thoughtful and in many ways attractive response. That nature works in lots of different places and under many different conditions is clear, and I don't think there can be much doubt that "natural objects obey the laws of nature", whatever they may be. I like the reference to "even those laws that we have not yet discovered", which leaves lots of doors wide open, including possible explanations for the phenomena we now regard as "paranormal". It may well be that we have barely scratched the surface of nature's powers. - The Hertz quotation is equally rich: "One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, and they are wiser than we are...etc." You yourself will have realized how close the language is taking us to the concept of design, but I see that as a genuine step forward in our attempts to find some kind of common ground. Since life exists, no-one will deny that something was responsible for bringing it about, and as David keeps telling us, what we have to do, at least initially, is stop attributing qualities to the force that made us. For you as an atheist, the power is impersonal and can be subsumed under the heading 'the laws of nature'. David will speak for himself, but his panentheism seems to me to come extraordinarily close to the same concept, since the refusal to attribute qualities to that power brings us simply to a name: call it 'laws of nature', call it 'God', call it 'X'. For a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, that same power has very definite attributes, and that is the point at which we all go our separate, speculative ways. - The point I'm suggesting here, in the light of the Hertz quote, is that what appears to be a radical clash of absolute opposites (theism v. atheism, while we agnostics hum and haw in between) is no such thing, once we dispense with the linguistic pigeonholes we impose on ourselves. We agree that there is a power, and we only disagree about the nature of that power. The name doesn't matter. - Of course we shall carry on disagreeing about virtually everything, because the nature of the power is at the heart of our discussion, but I think your post can help us push some of the linguistic debris out of the way.