More Denton: A new book (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 08, 2016, 18:20 (3182 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If what is eternal is energy and matter, ATI is derived from energy and matter. However, if what is eternal is a disembodied consciousness which uses energy and matter as what you call “raw materials”, BBella is right: it would have had to create energy and matter from consciousness, which is not a “thing”. How can consciousness simply exist without having anything to be conscious of, apart from itself, and then create the raw materials of energy and matter out of its no-thing? -DAVID: How do you know God's consciousness is disembodied? I consider it as a fully organized construction called God, conscious of itself and of its intentions. 
-What sort of “fully organized construction” are you thinking of? You wrote that God was consciousness, and this became “eternal conscious energy”. I assumed then that you were distinguishing between energy and matter. (As an ignorant layman, I must confess that despite all the scientific pronouncements on the subject, I still don't understand how energy can exist independently of matter, or matter independently of energy.) I don't know of any “body” which is not material. Hence “disembodied”. So now we have eternally conscious energy AND matter (God) consciously creating all the energy and matter that exists. Therefore if BBella's ATI can be called “a version of God”, ATI is God, and this version of ATI consciously created itself. Does that make sense? On the other hand, we can say energy and matter have always been derived from energy and matter. But can we say energy and matter have always been conscious of themselves? Why is that more logical than to claim that at some unknown time, energy and matter BECAME conscious of themselves?
 
Dhw: ...you “view God as a tough-love parent.” How anthropomorphic can you get? Furthermore, “we should solve problems by ourselves, by being self-reliant”. And yet you dismiss as “anthropomorphic” the proposal that the higgledy-piggledy history might be explained by your God creating life as an experiment or entertainment in which all organisms either solve or do not solve problems by themselves, by being self-reliant. Double standards, sir, double standards!
DAVID: You can have your God entertaining Himself. He doesn't need the TV, He's got us! What a lightweight view of the possibilities of God's personality. But then again you seek answers with no loose ends, when all we've got is loose ends and no explanation for humans arising from the struggling organisms of life with capacities well beyond the necessity of functionality.-Why is your view of God as a “tough love parent” any “heavier”, let alone any less “anthropomorphic” (the whole point of my criticism), than the view that God created life to relieve eternal boredom? Double standards.-You are right that we only have loose ends with no explanation, which is why I remain agnostic. Your God is one explanation riddled with loose ends, and your anthropocentric explanation of evolution's higgledy-piggledy history is another: humans “arising from the struggling organisms”, has been countered a thousand times by the fact that ALL multicellular organisms are beyond the necessity of functionality. And yet you believe in your hypotheses with all their loose ends, and reject any other possible explanation because....well, presumably because it has loose ends. Double standards.