ID as a Cultural Phenomenon (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, October 05, 2009, 08:39 (5320 days ago) @ xeno6696

We need to make a few personal adjustments, as the various posts sometimes lead to confusion as to who has said what. -1) You wrote: "A UI of the sort that David and you espouse..." I do not espouse a UI. I merely put forward suggestions as to its possible nature if it exists. I wrote explicitly: "My plea is not for belief in a soul or in an ethereal presence, but for open-mindedness towards concepts that have permeated human cultures since time immemorial." I have indeed been following your discussion with David. You write: "There's a human component to these old religions that creates a more vibrant and dare I say, sacred feeling, that is lost when the image of God becomes an 'all-encompassing everything'." That of course is a matter of personal opinion, but Asatru gods are still gods, and if my Wagnerian memory serves me correctly, don't the Valkyries take the souls of dead heroes to Valhalla? My point is that all these religions have common ground (a divine being or beings, souls) which might just possibly suggest a common truth. Interestingly, you disliked the concept of a UI with human components, whereas you seem to quite like the human components of the Scandinavian gods. As David has pointed out, if it's fear you want (not to mention myth and human interaction with the divine), the OT God can hold his own against anyone.-2) You wrote: "I almost take offense to the suggestion that I'm not being open-minded." Please don't take (or even almost take) offence. My plea was a general one, and was not directed at you personally, although since the post was a response to yours, I can see why you took it that way. I wrote: "It's just possible that your 90% of the world (I haven't counted) has cottoned onto something that your 10% has lost touch with". This was a reference to your statistic of people in the world who believe in a soul + ethereal presence ... not to your personal leanings! Most of my posts are an attempt to keep doors open, and so when certain concepts are described as meaningless or as fairy stories, I try to explain why I myself do not dismiss them, i.e. why one should keep an open mind. -3) And so to the famous Roman arches. You had written: "The statistics behind such an arch forming are staggering". I responded that by comparison the statistics behind our own appearance were "can't-stagger-any-further" staggering. You ask: "By what knowledge can you make that claim?" Quite right. I have no such knowledge, and should have said "in my opinion", rather than simply tottering in your statistical wake. In your second post, you wrote: "claims such as the odds of life happening by chance are .00000015 are meaningless." I agree. I've never made such a mathematical claim. But I will gladly explain why, in my view, the chances of the arch appearing naturally seem "staggeringly" better than our own. For all its complexity, as far as I know the arch has no faculty for reproduction, thought, movement, memory, imagination, consciousness, emotion, sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell etc. Each of these faculties, I believe, is of great complexity, and yet they are all encompassed within a single tiny space. After centuries of study, scientists have made enormous progress in explaining how the various mechanisms function, but there are still vast areas of uncertainty, and they still haven't succeeded in producing a living, replicating, evolvable body. By contrast, the Romans had no trouble building their arches thousands of years ago. My opinion is based fair and square on the incredulity factor, just as faith in God or chance is built on the credulity factor. There is a personal borderline beyond which each of us is unable to go. For example, I myself cannot believe in any sort of personal god. I can, however, believe that a block of stone may form an arch without the intervention of a designer (would you say I am being too credulous?). But I cannot believe that inanimate matter can spontaneously come to life, replicate, give itself evolutionary powers etc....you know the rest. As you point out: "Statistics are only meaningful when we know everything about the system we're studying; that we know all its variables. We don't." And since we don't know, we can only say what seems credible or incredible to us, and try to explain why.-[I have just read your extremely interesting post under "Bleached Faith", and will respond in due course.]