The immensity of the universe (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, January 21, 2016, 18:11 (3227 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: However, I was actually talking here about supernovas: the billions that must have come and gone throughout eternity, apparently as part of God's plan to produce humans. You wrote: “It worked at least once.” That means it didn't work billions of times.
DAVID: You misunderstood my comment: To create humans requires the explosion of millions/billions (?) of supernovas to create the critical elements in space for life that could then arrive at Earth to start life and finally humans. Humans are here, at least once!-So let me get this right (please correct where necessary). In order to fulfil his purpose to produce humans, your God had to create billions of solar systems containing trillions of stars, millions of which had to blow themselves up (by chance) or be blown up (by God) so that the critical elements could form (by chance) or be created (by God) and travel higgledy-piggledy to Earth (by chance) or be directed to Earth (by God). (Or perhaps he programmed the millions of explosions and the journey to Earth of the critical elements.) Once they had arrived, God put them together to make the first cells, which he preprogrammed with the weaverbird's nest and every other innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct, so that life could continue until humans evolved (though they are so “different” that he may have created them separately). And humans are here, so the above must be right.
 
DAVID: As for supernovas, they are built into the cosmic system and maybe God has plans for more sentient species in this vast universe that will eventually communicate with us. 
dhw: Or maybe all these supernovas and solar systems are just appearing and disappearing with nothing controlling them and with no purpose. 
DAVID: It is easy to recognize purpose if you don't accept chance.-And it is just as easy to recognize chance if you don't accept purpose. But for some of us, recognition and non-acceptance are equally balanced, since both theories are so full of question marks. (See above for a few of them.)-dhw: All life is amazing. We agree that its complexities are such that chance seems unlikely. ....Back to first cause: energy and matter, with consciousness always present (unlikely-seeming God) or evolving through a lucky combination of energy and matter (unlikely-seeming chance). Two unlikely-seeming hypotheses. Good reason to keep an open mind.
DAVID: To repeat: Chance or design equals purposeless chance or eternal consciousness. Only one is logical. Do you have a third choice?-Yes, my equally unlikely “bottom-up” panpsychist hypothesis, in which consciousness begins by chance through interaction between energy and matter, and from then on engineers its own self-designing evolution through experience and cooperation. Plenty of questions here too, but at least not as complicated as the supernovanovel narrated above.