Eternity (Origins)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 20, 2013, 14:37 (4019 days ago)

Dhw (under "Intelligence"): Alternatively, unconscious energy produces matter, which by its very nature is constantly changing. Maybe matter follows its own natural laws of self-organization. We humans see what happens, and so we extrapolate laws from what we see. If you insist that you can't make laws without a lawmaker, the atheist has every right to ask what made the maker of the laws. If you insist that consciousness had to be designed, who designed the consciousness of the designer? You would like to see this as an escape route. It's not. It's a logical impasse.-DAVID: You are escaping by using infinite regress. There must be an eternal first cause which provides information, not disorganization.-I've started a new thread because it seems to me that the implications of "eternal" merit a thread of their own. To understand the agnostic viewpoint, we need to go back to a subject we have already discussed and, in my view, not resolved satisfactorily.-If first cause consciousness has existed for ever and ever and ever, the alleged 13.7 billion years of our universe do not even constitute a single grain of sand in the desert. What do we imagine the first cause mind will have been doing with itself for ever and ever and ever? Well, all we know is that it has created this universe. So it's not unreasonable to assume that it's created universes before ours: zillions and zillions of them. -Once you accept that as being reasonable, we can turn our attention to first cause non-conscious energy which has existed for ever and ever and ever. What has it been doing with itself for ever and ever and ever? Well, all we know is that it has created this universe. So it's not unreasonable to assume that it's created universes before ours: zillions and zillions of them. And given an infinite amount of time and an infinite number of universes, it is not unreasonable to assume that sooner or later you will get the organization we have in our particular one. No, I do not believe in chance, any more than I believe in God. But I see no reason to dismiss either hypothesis, and if you can accept the reasonableness of conscious first cause energy producing countless universes, you will have to accept the reasonableness of unconscious first cause energy doing the same. A lot of strange things could happen when energy transmutes itself into matter for ever and ever and ever. -Of course eternity offers you infinite regress, and you can only end the retrospective cycle of effect-cause-effect-cause by settling on a first cause. But the notion of an eternal first cause is as open to atheism as it is to theism.