Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 27, 2014, 16:10 (3619 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw:You and I cannot believe that the information could arise by chance. That is as far as we can go.-Agreed-> 
> dhw: This is the whole point. There are different hypotheses. As an alternative to your single universe (we have no idea if it's single or not) planned by a hypothetical intelligence, I am offering hypothetical unlimited universes, and have traced the logical basis of such a speculation.-But your speculation is just that. Not logic. I can think of unicorns, which does mean they have any chance of being found in a living state. Or of the orbiting teapot. Just because we can imagine it, does not mean it ever existed. To overcome the problem of not accepting chance as a cause, you introduce the straw man fallacy of large numbers. Of course the answer to the problem of chance is large numbers. BUT, unfortunately, we only know of ONE universe, and I prefer to work with what is known, not what might be imagined.
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> dhw: You are ignoring the illogicality of the claim that intelligent life requires planning, but intelligent life does not require planning.-We are back to the issue of first cause, I think. Your sentence is not clear. Either there was something eternal or we have something from nothing. In the past you have accepted a first cause. You don't accept my type of a thinking and planning first cause, but when thinking theistically, you want such an intellect to evolve by chance from energy to a thinking consciousness. You are using chance while saying you don't accept chance. What a dichotomy!