Logic and evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, July 08, 2016, 13:04 (3059 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But what you call the ”mental road block” is due to the fact that a sourceless consciousness (God), lots of lucky breaks (chance), and an evolved panpsychist consciousness (also reliant initially on chance) are all beyond my credulity, and so I remain agnostic. This does not make my evolutionary hypothesis shakier than yours.-David's comment (Under “octopus”): Mother Nature is the best inventor, but who is the real inventor? If we have chance or design, who is the designer? If not God, who?
dhw: This is where we have to make distinctions: in my hypothesis concerning how evolution works, the real inventor of all these natural wonders is the intelligent organism itself (design). Then we have to ask what is the source of the intelligence of the inventive organism, chance or design? If not God, it's chance. And for reasons given above, I cannot give credence to either.-DAVID: What I can't seem to get you to accept is the issue of biologic complexity and the appearance of such giant-stepwise complexity that a planning mind must exists to create such leaps in complexity. If life arose from inorganic matter on its own (chance) where does the intelligence for such planning come from?-The issue of biologic complexity was one of the major factors that turned me away from atheism to agnosticism. One thing I can't seem to get you to accept is that there may be TWO kinds of planning mind. One is your God's, who may have planned the inventive mechanism, and the other is the inventive mechanism itself. The next thing I can't seem to get you to accept is that there are different theories about where intelligence might have come from originally (see above) and I am unable to accept ANY of them.