Living cells communicate (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, October 07, 2012, 20:13 (4431 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: If an eternal, universal intelligence can simply be there (first cause), and all things follow on from it, then an eternal, ever-changing, unconscious universe can simply be there (first cause), and all things follow on from that, including the chance combination ... out of an infinity of chance combinations ... that gave rise to intelligent life.-DAVID: You must assume that Big Bang did not occur to have an eternal universe. Recent math papers I have quoted here indicate that there is no 'before' before the Big Bang and this applies to multiverses also. (Alexander Vilenkin):-http://www.newgeology.us/Alexander%20Vilenkin.pdf -Thank you for this. My post was badly worded. I am not going to argue against the Big Bang theory ... as a non-scientist I have to (provisionally) accept the general consensus on this ... but I have absolutely no trust whatsoever in the theory that there was no before. How can anyone possibly have even a clue? And you don't believe it either, since again we agree that nothing can come from nothing. I should have written eternal, ever-changing, unconscious energy ... "energy" being the term which you and I have long since agreed on, leaving a choice which you have summarized admirably in your post, as followsAVID: What your proposal is left with is two-fold: unorganized energy by chance created what we see today or the energy had organization from the beginning and that energy had a direction toward complexity and created what we see today. The odds favor the latter.-Vilenkin may think so, and you may think so. But who can calculate the odds for something so remote? We have agreed that energy is the eternal "first cause" (whether conscious or unconscious), and we need to grasp the implications of "eternal". "Organization from the beginning" is wrong, since eternity has no beginning. And we can have absolutely no idea how that energy has behaved throughout eternity. Therefore the argument concerning infinite and eternal combinations still stands, not even limited to events since the Big Bang, but extending for ever and ever. Atheists will say that we just happen to be the lucky ones. As you so rightly conclude: "It all still is involved in faith in either of the two proposals I gave above." And science ends where faith begins, for theist as for atheist.