Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, June 10, 2013, 18:15 (4185 days ago) @ David Turell

In my reply to Tony, I summarized the three hypotheses we have discussed, one of them being "an evolving universe of individual intelligences with individual purposes but no overall purpose" ... and as always I pointed out that I "can accept none of them". In my reply to BBella and David, I once more explained my panpsychist hypothesis, which David has picked to pieces with a series of highly pertinent questionsAVID: [...] This means that the energy supplied to make the universe had an underlying order. There was a hidden organization hidden by the enormous heat. Please tell me who or what organized the energy in advance? How did this simple hierarchy then deveop consciousness? -I don't know. Please tell me how eternal first cause energy developed consciousness and was able to organize itself and the universe. (See below.)-DAVID: Who or what put the intelligence into the plasma? Why should hot plasma have any intelligence at all, unless the intellligence that made the heirarchy of energy forms preceeded the creation of the plasma?-I don't know. If the universe, life and human consciousness required intelligence to design them, why should we believe that the intelligence that designed them did NOT need to be designed? (See below) Perhaps, though, you should debate such issues with folk like Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking, Peter Higgs, Lawrence Krauss, Roger Penrose, Victor Stenger, Leonard Susskind etc., who also know a thing or two about physics but reject your hypothesis. I'm not saying they are right. I'm simply pointing out that NO-ONE has the answers to these questions.-dhw: Evolution itself depends on their cooperation, and as they combine, so the scale, depth, knowledge, experience also expand. And maybe when the matter disintegrates and once more becomes energy, that energy might possibly retain all the knowledge and experience it had gathered during its habitation of matter (I'm linking up now with psychic experiences like NDEs).-DAVID: I don't see the NDE link at all. And matter IS energy, all the time. Going back and forth is just changing the form of energy. Are you trying to propose that energy cannot learn anything unless it takes a form of matter? Convolution upon convolution.-The NDE link is that when the brain/body dies, NDE-ers claim that their existence continues. This can only be in the form of energy which is INDEPENDENT of matter but which retains the identity, memories emotions etc. that evolved while it was embedded in matter. Since you believe in an afterlife (I reserve judgement), I don't see how you can object to this.
 
DAVID: Energy/matter/energy/matter learning all the time. Using our current model in each of our human existences, since I don't really know where it is hiding, developing intelligence requires learning, thinking, analyzing, using mental language, and concluding. How does energy/matter do this on its own? By energy natural selection?-I don't know. Nobody knows. That is why there is no consensus. How did/does your first-cause energy learn, think, analyse, use mental language and draw conclusions on its own? Every single one of your questions requires a starting point for intelligence, and no matter what starting point you choose, you come up against the same unanswerable questions. The idea that your superintelligence came from nowhere but has always been there is no more and no less incredible than my idea that maybe intelligence evolved through energy's experience within changing matter, or the idea that chance assembled a magic combination of materials that sparked it all off. Belief in any of these ideas requires faith in the unbelievable.