Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 19:54 (3571 days ago) @ David Turell

DHW: I thought your dilemma lay between preprogramming and dabbling, but if you're merely saying "God did it and you don't know how", you're in the same boat as the atheist, who doesn't know how chance did it. 
DAVID: I'm not in that boat. Chance explains nothing, because chance can't possibly work.-The atheist says there is no God, therefore chance must have done it, though he doesn't know how. You say chance can't have done it, so God must have done it, though you don't know how. Neither of you can see that you are in the same boat. Two one-eyed kings...-dhw: I don't accept chance, and I don't accept God, and I don't accept my panpsychist alternative, but I don't reject any of them. That's why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: It seems to my you reject all of them.-It seems we agnostics are doomed to eternal misunderstanding! Nobody knows the answers. In every hypothesis there is a proportion of believability, plus a proportion of unbelievability. The unbelievable bits make it impossible for some of us to believe. The believable bits make it impossible for some of us to disbelieve. And so we neither believe nor disbelieve. But theists and atheists find it impossible to believe that someone can be neither a believer nor a disbeliever.-DAVID: The 'mysteriousness of consciousness' should act to convince you that something beyond naturalism is happening. You are obviously aware of all the things I present. Your decision not to reach a conclusion I can understand as a very personal approach by you. Something innate.-It is personal, as is your own, but not innate. It is just as much the result of conscious thinking as your decision that God exists. The mystery of consciousness is not solved by telling us that consciousness can only have been created by a consciousness that was not created.