Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, January 02, 2015, 12:54 (3613 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your answer will be that life started rather quickly after the Earth formed and cooled, surprisingly within a universe that also seems to have appeared out of nothing.
dhw: In this hypothesis, which I see as no more unlikely than your own, the universe did not appear out of nothing but out of the constant interplay between mindless eternal energy and matter (first cause).-DAVID: Nice interplay of words, but comes across to me as a fuzzy non-answer concept. Just how does the energy/matter ring-around work to advanced to what we have now?-It is no fuzzier than your non-answer concept of first cause consciousness. Nobody knows how energy advanced to what we have now, and “God did it” is not an explanation but a cop-out. -DAVID: And then those microbes, for some unknown reason decided to overcome being unicellular and suddenly developed complex multicellularity from simple precursors about 540 million years ago.
dhw: Evolutionists believe that's what happened. In my hypothesis, microbes (which many scientists say have their own form of intelligence) took that decision... In my hypothesis, that vast mind may exist, but it may have given those microbes the intelligence to do their own experimenting.-DAVID: At least here, at this level of more advanced development than energy/matter rig-around, you have a concept which offers a possibility of a valid explanation of how advances in complexity occur.-Yes indeed, no matter what might have been the unknown and unknowable source of microbial intelligence, the hypothesis offers an explanation of how evolution might work without a 3.7-billlion-year-old, all-inclusive computer programme.-DAVID: Nothing wrong with neutrality. But Agnostics lack the willingness to reason to the best solution to the question.
dhw: By which you mean agnostics lack the willingness to accept what you consider to be the best solution to the question. I am willing to consider every possible solution, but so far I have not come across one that I can label “the best”.-DAVID: Fair enough. But you have never explained how initial intelligence evolved, just that energy/matter must have done it.-Not “must” - that's the sort of vocabulary you like to use. I use “may” or “might”, because unlike theists and atheists, I am not restricted to a single hypothesis. You have never explained how initial intelligence came to exist. Just that it IS. I don't call than an explanation.