Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 03, 2015, 13:09 (3612 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But you have never explained how initial intelligence evolved, just that energy/matter must have done it.-Dhw: 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. -DAVID: Necessity. If you believe in a first cause and that complexity is now present that requires planning, it is an obvious logical step to accept a planning intelligence in the beginning. The issue is complex planning. You want simple energy and simple matter interact to produce complexity. Rabbit out of hat? Chance?-It all depends on what you mean by the beginning. According to your hypothesis, there is no beginning to a planning intelligence: it has always, miraculously, been present. Cause and effect no longer apply because, miraculously, we have a planning intelligence without a cause. Rabbit out of hat? This is no more logical than the hypothesis that, miraculously, intelligence began by evolving from interacting energy and matter, and as it evolved, it became increasingly complex (which is the nature of the evolutionary process, if you believe in common descent.) But this is not something I “want”, in the way you “want” eternal intelligence. I offer it only as an equally inexplicable alternative.