God and Reality (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Sunday, June 30, 2013, 20:38 (4162 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: When I asked whether your God might not have created universes prior to this one, you answered: "we can suppose an infinite number of universes in past eternity" and called it a "plausible answer to your question."-DAVID: Your question to me was what was God doing in the past before this universe? So I conjured up a supposition that he probably made other universes, since that is what we know He does. -Atheist supposition: non-conscious energy probably made other universes, since that is what we know it does.-DAVID: That supposition is not part of my belief system or vital to it. You are trying to make it seem as if it is.
 
The discussion is not about your belief system. You have attacked the atheist proposal of an infinite number of universes as poppycock, and yet you agree that an infinite number of universes is supposable and plausible!
 
DAVID: On the other hand, the atheists [...] are threatened by the designer universe concept. They need the hope, and hype, of multiverses to defend their position. They only know of one universe, just as I do, but have to invent from thin air and squirrely math a ray of hope from infinite universes. -Yes, atheists need it and you don't. Instead you "need" your eternal, hidden, tough love God to explain your own view of the universe, which atheists would dismiss as an invention "from thin air" because you need "the hope and the hype". The fact that people need an explanation does not make it poppycock. So please let us have a straight answer, regardless of your belief system: is the theory of infinite universes PLAUSIBLE or not?
 
dhw: ...each hypothesis impinges on the others, and they are always in conflict. I simply do not have the wherewithal to grasp the whole and make sense of it. No-one has. That is why you need faith to jump into your box!-DAVID: A very honest analysis. As I parse your words, the weakest consideration of yours is chance. The universe is not random, but follows rules and laws that make perfect sense to us. We have decoded much of the workings of this universe, granting as we have that its basis in the quantum realm is unyieldingly obscure. That leaves the design/designer option and the evolution of intelligence proposal. But panpsychism takes its cue from the recognition that intelligence and consciousness seem to pervade the universe. From my viewpoint the balance of improbability has design the winner.-You say I'm unwilling to think outside my box, but you always revert to design. I was thinking in terms of the "eternity, infinity, impersonality and randomness" of stars (like species) coming and going, all the red giants, all the white dwarfs, billions of galaxies, black holes devouring, no known life anywhere but here. And our Earth is a speck of dust, which will also disappear into unyielding obscurity. My atheist hypothesis suggests there's no sign, let alone proof of a single, conscious, purposeful mind creating and controlling all this ceaseless activity in all the impenetrable vastness of space. And my atheistic panpsychist hypothesis suggests there's no overall, purposeful intelligence pervading the universe, but only countless individual intelligences with their own individual (or communal) purposes. From your viewpoint design is the winner. So who's in a box?