Living cells communicate (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 09, 2012, 16:52 (4430 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: If you believe in eternal energy, and you believe in the Big Bang, and you believe that the Big Bang banged "from whatever energy was available at the time", how can you argue that there was no 'before'? -DAVID: What it means is that there is a discontinuity. We cannot study 'before' because it doesn't exist in our time frame since the Big Bang. We really agree.-Yes, we do. The fact that we cannot study 'before' does not mean that 'before' didn't exist (exeunt Guth and Vilenkin from our discussion, if you have interpreted them correctly). It only means that we have absolutely no idea what preceded the Big Bang, and we can only speculate. I see no grounds for holding one speculation to be more likely than another.-Dhw: Eternal energy means infinite potential, past as well as future. -DAVID: "Eternal energy means infinite potential" your phrase cannot be taken seriously. Raw energy such as lightning has great potential and will strike something but is not organized in a way to do anything else. When I discuss organized energy I'm thinking of intelligence, so the raw eternal energy you propose must become organized in some way to then create potentials of complexity. -You believe that eternal energy is conscious. Atheists will argue that whatever energy created the universe is unconscious. Why call it raw, and why illustrate it with lightning? Why not call it dark, or unknown, and leave it at that? Even your UI is an unknown form of energy. In both cases, energy is the 'first cause' and it created the matter of which our universe is composed. Since we have no idea what preceded the creation of our universe, we have no idea how often in the eternal past this unknown form of energy (conscious for you, unconscious for the atheist) has turned itself into different forms of matter, different universes. The potential is infinite if, as you have said, it is eternal. I would, however, find it difficult to believe that your eternal, conscious energy sat around doing nothing throughout its eternal past until it suddenly hit on the idea of big-banging us into existence. Our own universe is proof that first cause energy can transmute itself or be transmuted into a universe. If one, why not an infinity of universes? And hence an infinity of combinations. All pure, unprovable, speculative theory, of course ... just like the theory of an eternal, intelligent, unknown form of energy. But if you can take one seriously, I think you should take them both seriously. -DAVID: I don't see how a raw blob of energy could conjure up intelligence. So I'm back to 'first cause'. There has to have been an eternal universal intelligence to start with.
 
And that is where science turns into philosophy and faith. You don't see how unintelligent energy could conjure up intelligence (ours), and yet you think energy can simply "be" intelligent without any conjuring up. Superintelligence just "is", whereas a lesser intelligence has to be created. I don't think there is any disagreement between us on this ... you have acknowledged many times that this is a matter of faith, as is faith in unintelligent energy.
 
DAVID: To go from raw energy to human consciousness is a stochastic impossibility, despite Matt's objections to having to know everything before one can make that statement.-The alternatives are, for me, equally impossible to believe, though one must be correct: chance creating the mechanisms that led to human consciousness versus eternal consciousness with no mechanisms at all.
 
DAVID: It takes a lot of faith to tolerate the picket fence. The faith that both sides can be correct.-You would need to define faith. In my book, it requires belief. My form of agnosticism acknowledges that one side must be correct, but since I find both sides equally impossible to believe, I have no faith in either. A suspended judgement is not what I would call faith.