Eternity (Origins)

by dhw, Friday, November 22, 2013, 14:07 (4017 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Why is it unreasonable to suggest that throughout the "for ever and ever and ever" past there might have been countless other universes, since we know that the first cause has produced this one? 
DAVID: Because you are inventing suppostions. Stick only to what we know and then look back for what might be attributed to the result. Don't invent other results. It only confuses philosophic debate.-All the suppositions are invented and geared to what brought our universe and life into existence. Your invented supposition is an eternal intelligence, based in your case on the unlikelihood of chance. An atheist is perfectly entitled to challenge this argument with his own invented supposition - if one universe in eternity, why not others, vastly reducing the odds against chance? There is of course no more evidence of their existence than of your (hidden) God's existence, but if we stick to what we know, we cannot go beyond the reality of this universe and life. All the rest is supposition and philosophical debate ... including your God.-Dhw: Folk like Dawkins believe that our universe is the result of natural laws that govern matter, there is no universal intelligence, and eventually the mysteries of life and consciousness will be explained by materialism. They can argue that an infinite number of universes going back through eternity is bound eventually to produce one that will harbour life.-DAVID: Yes, they can bet on chance and have their on conclusions as to origin but infinite preceding universes is like adding suppostions like the multiverse, or Steinhardt's bouncing baby, for which he admits it is a thought full of holes:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029402.900-no-need-for-inflation-if-cosmos-was-...-ALL the suppositions are thoughts full of holes. That is why there is no consensus. We know our universe is here. An eternal self-aware creator is an "added supposition", and is just one of various speculations as to how our universe may have come into being.-dhw: "First cause" explains nothing. I see no difference between this "somehow" and the "somehow" whereby intelligence evolved within materials. They are equally "amorphous". 
DAVID: If you accept Aristotle's cause and effect, then there is a chain of contingency. If you reject the concept, then you have chosen to go back to chance. -I have chosen nothing, and I do not reject the chain of cause and effect. I simply dispute the claim that the only possible first cause is conscious energy. The atheist's choice of chance is not a rejection of cause and effect; it is a rejection of your version of the first cause.-DAVID: As for evolving intelligence, this is just as mysterious as speciation, for which we have no answer. Species are there, so we know it happened. Intelligence is there, but there is no existing theory that says it evolved. That is the Wilsonian theory.
 
What do atheists attribute both intelligence and speciation to if not evolution? They even hope to find the material source! At what point and how intelligence might have evolved is another matter.
 
DAVID: Intelligence must involve information. Where did the informtion come from? Same old question. It must be supplied by intelligence. First cause must have had intelligence with information. I can't excape that reasoning.-"Information" is the in-word these days. Perhaps it's time for you to tell us what information you are talking about. An infinity of mindless matter would contain infinite amounts of information. Only intelligence would be aware of that information. The burning question is not where information came from, but where intelligence came from.