Junk DNA: goodbye!: Review article (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, March 15, 2015, 19:48 (3541 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: But from that initial step, once cells reproduced themselves and were able to combine and learn from one another (no more absurd than eternal, unsourced energy already knowing everything there is to know), the majority of your factors automatically come into play. -TONY: That 'initial step' is a few trillion 'initial steps' totally disregarded, each of which that had to happen 'just so', each of which had to happen a few trillion times. -DHW: I'd better repeat that I am not championing atheism, and my intelligent cell hypothesis can also be viewed theistically. I am simply explaining my agnosticism, which in discussions with you and David inevitably entails putting my own case for atheism.-TONY: That would be because you are. And you are doing it in much the same fashion that Atheists do. You are trivializing that "initial step", and trivializing the fact that it would have had to to happen a tremendous number of times both consecutively and concurrently in order for that initial step to have occurred. And you are trivializing the absurd number of things that aren't subject to evolutionary trial and error, such as the "just so" laws of physics and the "just so" location of the planet and the a whole slew of other "just so" parameters, none of which are even remotely possible statistically and are wholly unaffected by evolution.-As always, you mount what I view as a perfectly justified case against atheism, but you ignore the framework of our discussion, which is that both sides “trivialize” and place their faith in hypotheses that beggar belief. Must I spell it out for you? You like figures. Well, nobody knows the size of the universe - it may even be infinite. Based on what can be observed, some folk estimate that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. There may be 10 billion galaxies. Do the maths yourself. If the universe is finite, some websites suggest it may be 92 billion light years in diameter. There are stars constantly being born while others die - to what purpose we have no idea. You believe that this unimaginable, ever changing vastness (our sun and our planet will also die one day) was created by, and is controlled and contained by (or contains) a conscious mind, perhaps even a being at least 92 billion light years in diameter (for maybe the universe itself IS your God), though you don't know what it is made of, how it acquired its consciousness, why it is constantly making new stars and allowing others to die, or what it might have done or even consisted of before it created this universe. Some people even believe that this unimaginably vast mind created this unimaginably vast universe with its unimaginably vast number of stars past, present and future, just for the sake of producing us humans on the tiny speck we call Earth. They even think that the spirit of 92 times whatever billion light years' worth of materials and energy (sorry, I can't do the real maths) loves and cares about Mr Ugg, who died a thousand years ago in the village of Ugg in Uggland.-You think that I am trivializing the origin of life and the conditions that allow for life because of the odds against them. In the context of what may be the infinity of our universe, or at least of numbers so vast that they might just as well be infinite, you argue that our pathetically limited life and consciousness can only have been designed, whereas the eternal consciousness creating and controlling let's say 92 times whatever billion light years of space and matter and the zillions of stars and the intricate complexities of our own life and consciousness simply IS. Yet you regard the view that our own life simply IS as a cop-out. -If one side in the battle between theism and atheism is guilty of trivialization, so is the other. (And I haven't even mentioned the history of the gods.) However, one of you is closer to the truth than the other, so my scepticism towards both chance AND a designer is patently wrong. Therefore you and David, Dawkins and Hawking are quite right to cherish your respective faiths, and I can only sit on my fence and let myself be pelted from both sides. Fortunately, the folk on this website are relatively gentle throwers!