Natural Teleology: More Thomas Nagel (The limitations of science)

by David Turell , Wednesday, February 06, 2013, 19:24 (4306 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Only one of these four options leaves life to chance, and you have ignored the last of them (the panpsychist variant), which offers "intelligence" without God.-I have the firm belief that you cannot offer intelligence as a first cause and it not be God. As I understand panpsychism it is intelligence in everything in the universe. That is really panentheism. God is everywhere, for example, as in your consciousness, which is part of Him, whether you want to accept Him or not.- 
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> dhw: I am very happy with this answer, just as I am very happy with your arguments against chance. Our difficulties don't arise from arguments AGAINST anything. The problem is arguments FOR (chance, various forms of God, various forms of panpsychism). These are always a matter of faith, and I do not find one faith more reasonable than another. -God has various forms in various religions, usually anthropomorphic. And I feel worthless. -> 
> dhw:I'm particularly interested in the ravenous black hole in M106, "actively devouring matter and spewing out jets of particles". Since you believe that your version of God planned our universe with the express purpose of creating us, I wonder if you have any thoughts on why he might have created these gulping, spitting black holes all over the place, with matter appearing and disappearing all the time. It all seems rather higgledy-piggledy to me.-There is a view by some scientists and theologans that the specific laws of nature by which the universe is evolving are constricted to allow only this sort of evolution. For example, the formation of galaxies always requires a black hole at the center. Galaxies are present due to quantum fluctuations in the original plasma after the Big Bang. And so on. It really seem to be all planned out by design.