Far out cosmology (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 28, 2014, 12:45 (3951 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I would like to get a firm answer from an atheist or agnostic on something, though. How many lines of indirect evidence would it take for them to admit/accept the possibility/probability of a designed universe, and thus the presence of a designer?
What I take from many of the discussions that I see is that less proof would be needed to get them to accept the idea of the tooth fairy or magic than it would for them to accept a designer. We have less evidence for multi-verses than we do for design, yet scientist are willing to accept the possibility of a multi-verse but not a designer. The theories of dark matter, dark energy, and other flights of fancy are based on less evidence than that of a designer. So, the question, how many lines of evidence would it take to get a scientist to say 'I admit that the possibility of a designer is at least as good, if not better, than the possibility of random chance creating everything that exists.-I can't speak for atheist scientists, but I'll try to answer as an agnostic non-scientist. I find the evidence for design very compelling, but I see no evidence of a single conscious designer. The design we know may come from within the materials themselves, and whatever degree of awareness is necessary for each design may have evolved within individual collections of matter. This is the form of panpsychism that attributes mental aspects to all spatio-temporal things. Instead of one single conscious being, we have untold billions of consciousnesses (though I prefer to use the term intelligence) of varying degrees, gradually evolving into more and more complex entities. It all comes down to the origin and nature of consciousness, and BBella has given us a masterly summary of the problem. Theists hide behind the cop-out argument that their God's consciousness was always there so they don't have to explain it. Atheists rely on the cop-out argument that it evolved by way of random chance starting things off. The third possibility is the cop-out panpsychist hypothesis outlined above.
 
My agnostic answer to your question can only be that none of these three hypotheses offer a convincing explanation of the origin of consciousness (and by extension the designs that have stemmed from consciousness). Each is equally possible, but I see no reason to give one precedence over the others.