Cosmic Intelligence (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 08:32 (5644 days ago) @ George Jelliss

In the context of intelligence, George has quoted me quoting Dawkins: "If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural." - My own context was Dawkins' attack on agnosticism, and so perhaps to start with, you will allow me to continue by quoting from myself: "Christians too hope that one day their beliefs will be vindicated, but where is the scientific objectivity of either approach? His own [referring to the whole passage] amounts to saying: I believe the world is entirely physical, there are things I don't understand, but one day I hope I'll be proved right. And yet according to Dawkins, atheists have no faith. Agnostics do not impose theories on what they do not understand, and they do not hope that their prejudgments will be proved right." I see no difference between Dawkins' subjectivity and that of the theists, except that he is a scientist, which makes some people think that his prejudices bear the stamp of greater authority. - However, your main point is that those "who believe in disembodied intelligence need to provide some model of how it could possibly work." From my own standpoint of general uncertainty, I too have difficulty, but this is where consciousness, music, art, psychic phenomena etc. play their part. I suppose we're coming back round the mulberry bush again, but since no-one has yet worked out how the "electrical or chemical" structures actually produce consciousness, thought, symphonies, sculptures, ESP, NDEs, OBEs, inexplicable knowledge etc., I cannot dismiss the idea of a different dimension as wish-fulfilment or pipe-dreams. In other words, it is possible (no more) that they provide the model you demand. - Although this has nothing to do directly with your post, I would like to express my dislike of the current trendy formula "God-of-the-gaps". For me, the existence of a "supernatural intelligence" is a theory. So too is abiogenesis. So too is evolution (though I accept most aspects of it). In all our contemplations of the universe, we are confronted by a number of facts, and between those facts are GAPS. Every theory is an attempt to fill them, and the idea that only science is qualified to fill those gaps is another theory, which is based on the premise of materialism. However, if we forget terms like God, supernatural, spirit etc., and concentrate solely on nature, we can all agree that there are vast areas of it that we do not understand. It is possible that we have not yet come anywhere near comprehending what is and isn't "natural", so what grounds do we have for assuming that it can all be explained in terms of what we already know? Not even Dawkins makes that assumption. He simply hopes that it's true.