Eternity (Origins)

by dhw, Saturday, November 23, 2013, 16:53 (4016 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw; "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.-DAVID: That is correct. Do you really understand what the word information as used in my discusdsion implies? It is the plan by which life operates. It is the laws by which the universe operates. See Tony's response. Plans are information that are put into a computer, DNA in this case. They do not grow by chance. They require a mind. That is why I keep referring to St. Thomas. Following this reasoning leads to a mental first cause.-"Plans" and "laws" are loaded terms, because of course they imply intelligent design, but the atheist case is that there is no planning. Dawkins says there are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies in our universe alone (disregarding the zillions of universes that may have preceded our own), and atheists argue that the "laws" are natural and not divine (i.e. that is how materials behave). You have agreed that nobody knows where intelligence comes from. And so a reasonable atheist counter to St Thomas would be that instead of an inexplicable intelligence preceding the birth of the universe, we have a chance constellation (no plan, just one out of billions and billions of possibilities) capable of harbouring life, and an inexplicably evolving intelligence that uses the information contained in the mindless universe. It's one inexplicable intelligence against another.