Arguments against Design (General)

by dhw, Saturday, August 15, 2009, 11:12 (5577 days ago) @ BBella

BBella has once again explained her concept of a Universal Intelligence. Thank you for your patience. I'd like to comment very briefly on a couple of your remarks: - 1) Many written scripts may hold some of this concept because possibly somewhere in our memory is a remembrance of this knowing, but all is distorted thru time, perception and power.
An important argument for religious tolerance. If there really is some kind of god ... no matter what kind ... it makes perfect sense to me that all the religions would have a grain of truth in them. They all look to capture the same unknowable force, and so they all use their own imagery, because it's only through imagery that we can gain any access to it. But try telling that to the fundamentalists! - 2) None of us hold or have any identity apart from that which we relate with and to. In other words, we are nothing without each other.
I think this is only partly true. We have relations with ourselves as well as with others, and these depend largely on our own characteristics. Perhaps, though, you can develop this idea on the new "Identity" thread. - 3) How we choose to believe about what appears matters more than what actually is, in my estimation, as that is what guides our own happiness or peace in everyday life.
Since we can't know "what actually is", this has to be right. - 4) What would be the title of the new thread?
"Identity". I hope we can now shift this discussion across, as we've gone some distance away from the "Arguments against Design". As an illustration of the problem, if we take 3), we might ask why we choose what we choose. You are right when you say the choice "appears free to our conscious awareness", and maybe it doesn't matter whether it is or isn't free, but the question I would like to pursue is the source of the ability to make the choice, because it's that source (whatever it may be) that shapes our identity.