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

by dhw, Monday, February 11, 2013, 12:04 (4301 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...but there are plenty of people who do believe in chance or different versions of panpsychism, with the first cause being unselfconscious energy, i.e. they do not have to assume that something came of nothing. By all means reject their beliefs on the grounds of complexity, but do not assume that the only alternative is something from nothing.-DAVID: I'm not assuming 'something from nothing', you are.
 
This is a misunderstanding. I am not assuming anything! You had argued ... in my view correctly ... that nothing can come from nothing. You then went on to say that this makes God a "necessary being". If you read my comment more closely, you will see that my objection is to your assumption that, if nothing can come from nothing, God is the "necessary" first cause. Other people argue that the necessary first cause can be unselfconscious energy (which is something, not nothing). Your argument that this is unlikely because of the complexity of life etc. is not what I am opposing.
 
DAVID: Where did the 'unselfconscious energy' come from? Was it eternal? If eternal, so is my self-aware God who is the UI. Something must be eternal.-There is no disagreement between us on this point. -DAVID: The base of everything is energy, so energy is eternal. Our disagreement is on whether that energy is organized or not and I do not think unorganized energy can become organized, except by chance and you and I have rejected chance as a likely possibility. I do not think unorganized energy can produce the reality we see.
 
Dhw: ...One of these concepts [God, chance, a form of panpsychism] must be true, but I have no idea which one. I would suggest that the logical conclusion is: we don't know, we can't know, and therefore we shall have to keep an open mind.-DAVID: And I disagree. Only one choice is logical, a planning self-aware mind. There is no way an amorphous clump of energy can do any more than degrade according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. An eternally organized UI most likely does not experience entropy or it would not, by definition, be eternal.-And as you have so often agreed in the past, it requires faith to believe in such a "mind". I have always accepted your argument against chance, which I regard as being just as unlikely as an eternal, organized, self-aware clump of energy that does not experience entropy. Your faith in God arises from the unlikelihood of chance. The atheist's faith in chance arises from the unlikelihood of God. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.