Intelligence (Origins)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 19, 2013, 19:42 (4265 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I know my biblical approach to understanding is certainly not the popular course. I am quite used to being mocked for it, called various names and having slurs made against my intelligence. (Not by anyone here, just in general)
 
I hope you will never be mocked on this website for your beliefs, but you will certainly be challenged!
 
TONY: In light of Dawkin ilk, how fitting:
2 Peter 3: Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.-If I remember rightly, Dawkins and his ilk (and dhw and his ilk) will be physically resurrected on the new earth, judged, and killed off again, but this time for good. And although the bible tells us to fear God, it doesn't mean fear. All part of what you later call "the greatest game". You have resurrected an old chestnut. Are we going to judge it and kill it off again (for good)?-I don't want to shorten the rest of your post, because it's full of profound observations, beautifully expressed. I also agree with most of what you say, but there is an insoluble problem which I will try to formulate at the end.-TONY: The rules governing the way the molecules bind together; the rules governing the lattices that are formed; the rules governing the geochemical processes that formed them; these things and so much more are too complex, too elegant, and too perfect to be the product of anything other than carefully orchestrated design. Let's forget the topic of life for the moment. The very rocks themselves scream out that they were designed. There are hundreds of different types, some of which even change over time. How beautifully and elegantly designed are the forces that allow such variation to come from so called 'simple' processes.
Do not dismiss the point of my argument by thinking that it only applies to games. Games, in essence, are a set of rules that govern activity in such a way that they are found 'enjoyable' to people. What are physics, biology, cosmology, geology, or any other science for that matter, but disciplines and lenses for studying the most elegant set of rules in existence? Rules that allow for people to 'enjoy' life in this universe. God is the greatest game designer ever, and this existence is the greatest game ever designed. 
Random chance, whether through pure chance or through the inventive processes of living elements that have demonstrated no inventive capability, does not possess sufficient explanatory power because it only seeks to explain one minor element in a design that is so much grander in scale that it boggles the mind.-My problem lies not so much in what you say as in what you don't and can't say. I believe that humans evolved from earlier forms of life that were not capable of the feats humans can achieve. When we see a machine or a building, read a novel, listen to a symphony, we marvel at the ingenuity of the human mind. How much more marvellous, then, must be the mind that you believe created the human mind, and created the mechanisms that led from bacteria to us. It is inconceivable to you that the great minds which created the complex, beautiful and elegant machines, buildings, novels, symphonies could be anything other than the products of deliberate design. And yet you seem to have no difficulty believing that the infinitely greater mind that created ours was NOT designed. Nebulous concepts like "first cause" do nothing to hide the total illogicality of this way of thinking. If you can believe in an undesigned SUPER-intelligence, why can't you believe in an undesigned and evolving lesser intelligence, or in an eternal lottery which eventually came up with the right numbers? There is no demonstrable evidence for any of these hypotheses, and although one must be closer to the truth than the others, none of them possess "sufficient explanatory power" to convince anyone without a large helping of irrational faith. That is why I remain an ignorant, but nonetheless marvelling, mind-boggled agnostic.