An attack on modern science (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Friday, January 30, 2015, 19:25 (3370 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You claim that the first cause is conscious energy. If this is true, all matter came from that energy, and whether it's one or a zillion universes, the same principle has to apply: energy and matter endlessly being transformed. If you can have your conscious energy transforming itself, why I can't I have my unconscious energy transforming itself?
DAVID: I'm trying to imagine you unconscious and writing a play, as an example of how preposterous your theory is.-Then please try instead to imagine single-celled organisms eventually evolving into humans. And before that try to imagine inanimate matter becoming animate. That is what you believe happened. Only you believe that it happened through a mysterious, inexplicable, first-cause conscious energy making it happen. I am proposing the same process, except that it happened through a mysterious, inexplicable dawning of comparatively primitive consciousness within matter that gradually increased in complexity. Either way you have an inexplicable form of consciousness, and if one is preposterous, then so is the other. However, you argued that mindlessness was incapable of creating anything. I have no difficulty imagining mindlessness creating rocks, stars, gases, chemicals...And this brings us to the second point:
 
dhw: ...Smolin and Unger's preference for a single universe in a succession of universes would shorten the odds against one of those universes coming up with a combination of materials to engender some form of awareness.
DAVID: I'm with Smolin and Unger as is George! I think it is possible that God has done this before, one universe at a time. Eternity is very long. As for awareness from rocks, no way.-George doesn't believe in a before or in other universes, but thank you for your explicit support for this part of my hypothesis. If God created one universe, he might well have created earlier universes, and the same applies to mindless first-cause energy. Eternity is indeed long enough for any number of universes, and so the odds shorten in favour of one of them eventually coming up with a combination of materials to create life.
 
I am not proposing awareness coming from rocks (though some forms of panpsychism might.) I am proposing awareness from those materials that came together to give life to inanimate matter. However, please do not mistake a hypothesis for a belief. Even with this hypothesis, I still cannot imagine chance assembling the ingredients for life, reproduction, consciousness and evolution. That is one reason why I am not an atheist. It is just as difficult for me to imagine as a universal mind from nowhere that knows everything even before it exists. That is one reason why I am not a theist. I would not in fact describe either hypothesis as “preposterous”, but I am merely a gentle, tolerant agnostic.