Is our solar system weird? The current odds (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, July 15, 2016, 12:25 (3053 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: As always, we have the two separate issues: 1) how does evolution work? 2) How did life and the evolutionary mechanism, whatever it may be, come into being? As regards 1), the wild proliferation is logically explained by an autonomous inventive mechanism that enables creatures to adapt to and exploit the vast range of environmental conditions. You prefer a 3.8-billion-year computer programme plus dabbling. As regards 2) it requires a colossal leap of faith to believe that chance could create life and the evolutionary mechanism - just as it requires a colossal leap of faith to believe that an almighty, universe-creating, universe-encompassing mind could simply exist without a source. - DAVID: I would remind you the start of life and evolution are an inseparable continuum, so you are raising two questions in one continuous process. The ability to evolve must be coded into the beginning. I would also remind there must be a first cause. There has never been a true nothing. - When I asked how life and the evolutionary mechanism, whatever it may be, came into being, I did not separate them. When I asked what that evolutionary mechanism was (= how does evolution work), I went on to list three possibles: my autonomous inventive mechanism, your 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme, and your divine dabbling. How the mechanism came into being and what the mechanism consists of are two separate questions. I would also remind you that we have agreed a thousand times that there must be a first cause, and I have never proposed “nothing”. Your first cause is conscious “pure” energy, and my equally unlikely alternative is unconscious energy and matter eternally transforming themselves.