Evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, May 23, 2009, 08:53 (5459 days ago) @ David Turell

David wrote that he could not imagine a conscious universal intelligence losing interest in what it created, and I asked what he thought the agent was interested in. He doesn't know if the agent is merely sitting back or experimenting, and he doesn't know what interests it. "I don't think we have to know as I have stated before." - Thank you once again for your direct answers. Of course, it makes sense not to chase after the uncatchable, but it's a very human trait that we keep trying! - To set the record straight, I do not have "a great yearning for an agent with a loving personality". It would, of course, be wonderful if there was a loving God and paradise waiting to welcome us, but I am deeply sceptical and my scepticism causes me no distress at all. Just as you are comforted by the thought that your mind (consciousness) "is a small part of the agent's universal mind", I am comforted not only by my enjoyment of life, but also by the thought that if, as seems to me quite likely, there is an impersonal agent or no agent at all, life will end in a peaceful, dreamless sleep. - I'm saddened only by the suffering I see all around me (and to which I may yet become subject). I don't know why you say this is "due to sex" when there are so many other factors involved as well ... carnivorousness, disease, natural disasters, plus all the other survival instincts that have evolved into the selfishness which underlies many of our man-made disasters. You say you can "simply observe this process", though as a doctor you did far more than I ever could to alleviate its effects. I observe it too, and it makes me argue against the wishful thinking and blinkered vision of most religions. I have no difficulty, though, understanding suffering as the product of natural processes within an impersonal universe. That is why your panentheism is intellectually appealing, as is George's atheism. But I can't switch off at that point. Hence the protracted discussions on abiogenesis, the paranormal, and the nature of an agent if there is one. For me they are all threads in the same confused pattern.