A Panpsychist Hypothesis (General)

by dhw, Thursday, June 19, 2014, 23:01 (3808 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...you are making it sound as if the particles existed separately from God himself ... but according to you, God IS those particles of energy, because he is the first cause. Nothing else existed, and matter IS energy. So how could first cause pure energy (your God) have acquired the information to create the materials of the universe and life before it had even transmuted itself into matter?-DAVID: God is intelligence and information from the very beginning. God is eternal. [...]-You and I have agreed that the first cause is eternal energy. (The only other suggestion we've had is George's "nothing", and I've just seen that he has made a welcome and entertaining return! Perhaps you'd like to join in, George?) When it acquired intelligence and information is the point at issue. If it is eternal, there was no beginning.
 
DAVID: I have admitted in the past that I don't know, and cannot know, how God is constructed in a pure energy state to be both intelligence and information, but within the quantum level of reality, where I think He resides, everything is counterintuative.-Fair comment. But any version of first cause energy is counterintuitive: 1) intelligence and information magically all present and correct without a beginning; 2) a total blank that by chance hits on a winning formula; 3) energy as a single entity of potential intelligence that magically becomes aware of itself and can experiment and learn to create universes and life; 4) energy as potential intelligence that forms particles of matter which magically become aware of themselves so that they cooperate to form universes and life. You could argue that all of these counterintuitive hypotheses belong to "the quantum level of reality", which nobody understands. One brick wall is as impenetrable as another.
 
dhw: If your God experimented in order to produce humans, he clearly did not have total knowledge of what was needed.
DAVID: I can only repeat that God chose evolution to create US. Evolution, as we have seen, does not follow a straight path and shows experimentation. He may have had to steer it. -My point was that the possibility of experimentation in the one field denotes incomplete information, and that enhances the possibility of incomplete information in every field, from the creation of matter onwards. -dhw: .....Why are you not prepared to consider the possibility of a God that had to acquire by experience the information needed to make universes and life? 

DAVID: That is not the way I envision God, but you are right [...] After the start of the universe and life He may have had to develop some experience.-I'm quite happy with "may", though I'd extend it to before the start of this universe and of life. My point is that if, at any time, first cause energy may have needed experience to fulfil its potential intelligence, it may have been nothing but potential intelligence right up until it began to experience awareness in zillions of separate particles of matter. I'm not seeking to replace one illogical hypothesis with another. I'm only trying to establish that this one is just as credible as yours and as that of atheistic materialism and luck, allowing for the brick wall they all have in common. But I'm also taking in variations on your God hypothesis. Any statement about his powers and his intentions can only be pure speculation, and so even a theist should allow for alternative interpretations because, as you so rightly say about evil, free will etc., and as I say about the origin of the universe and life, it's all guesswork. That's why some of us find it so difficult to climb off the agnostic fence!