Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 31, 2013, 17:07 (4195 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If effect follows cause, it's hardly surprising that initial conditions controlled the early evolution of the universe. Different conditions would no doubt have led to a different evolution. -DAVID: The issue is who set the conditions, especially since they ended in the evolution of a universe that is fine-tuned for life. Penrose placed the odds for such a chance beginning, famously and widely quoted, as 10^10^123. Chance is eliminated by mathematician consensus at a range 10^50-150. If initial conditions just were set by whatever (which you don't specifiy) then they were set by chance. and you don't like chance anymore than I do. Only one specific set of initial conditions created this life-allowing universe!-Given our agreement that the first cause is eternal energy, there may have been 123 zillion big bangs and universes, and 123 zillion forms of life or just ours alone. Who knows? Has Penrose calculated the odds against eternal energy being or becoming conscious of itself? And are they reckoned to be any different from the odds against energy becoming conscious of the changes taking place in the matter within which it is embedded?
 
You've glossed over your oxymoron of controlled, planned, rule-following chaos, which surely not even you can believe in, especially since you mistakenly condemned my panpsychist hypothesis for that very same reason. Our universe's chaos led to our universe's order, but nobody knows how. So we can all pull to pieces the theories of chance, divine intelligence, panpsychist intelligence, because there is NO theory that doesn't ultimately depend 100% on FAITH.
 
DAVID: I don't know that'my God' is alive in any sense we know. He is a supreme intelligence in a quantum state of conscious energy, here in the sense that He is everywhere, but not a state or level of reality that we can reach.-See below.-dhw: You referred us to an article in defence of ID, which quoted Dembski.
dhw: My point specifically was "there is nothing in this whole article that contradicts the panpsychist hypothesis I have suggested, which SUPPORTS the case for design...-DAVID: It is your faith in your convoluted theory of panpsychism which provides the aura of SUPPORT.-As I have stressed repeatedly, I do not have faith in it. I merely offer it as an alternative form of design which I regard as no more improbable but considerably less convoluted than a quantum state of energy that creates planned and rule-following chaos, may or may not be alive in any sense we know, and is everywhere within and without the universe, but not at any level of reality we can reach.