Cosmology: Latest theories of everything (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 08, 2017, 08:52 (2664 days ago) @ John Kalber

Reblak: Sadly, I tend to lose track of which post is which. Used to have a memory like a steel trap, but at 86 it just isn't so. I have saved my answers but can't find the questions!

May I suggest, then, that you save the questions as well! Thank you for your very interesting biography, and your willingness to engage in debate. On a formal point, when you are quoting other people, would you please put the quotes in italics. Otherwise, it’s very difficult for readers to know who said what. As follows:

dhw: I don’t see why you can’t have both (no magic involved) since they are perfectly reconcilable. Forgive me, but your views on what a possible God may have done, or known in advance, is hardly an answer.
Reblak: A theist may have both, but an atheist cannot.

You had said that “we must choose between the unquestionable will/act of God” and a “full explanation in the language of physics”. That implies the two are incompatible, and they are not. Obviously someone who has made up his mind that there is no God will not “have” God, but that does not mean the rest of us “must choose” between God and science.

You wrote that you were “immovably convinced that the Universe is totally and absolutely perfect”. Now you say “The baseless imagining of criteria for ‘perfect Universes’ is, frankly, very silly.” And “Our Universe must, unavoidably, be accepted as perfect because there is no possible way we can genuinely and honestly, even in imagination, envisage an alternative – we have absolutely no ‘criterion whatsoever.” I’m afraid I can see no connection between “perfection” and our inability to envisage an alternative. If there are no criteria, why bother to talk of “perfection” at all? What is your point in doing so?

Dhw: And yet you believe that living beings can be produced by an impersonal and unconscious force which works automatically”.
Reblak: Of course I do! The only force known in absolutely any form of creation are the acts of what I, rather lovingly, denote as Mother Nature. Whilst I am open to consideration of future possible discoveries, they will not be found by illogical imagination.
Until some properly evidenced discovery is made logic suggests that Mother Nature does it alone and unaided by any other than the known laws of our rather marvellous Universe.

You use the term “Mother Nature” just as theists use the term “God”, to explain everything, but this simply makes you into a pantheist. What you actually mean is that a blind, unconscious, unthinking force automatically “does it alone”. But so far the only arguments you have offered for this irrational faith are that you don’t believe in God, and that one day you will be proved right. (See the next point:)

Dhw: You have admitted that “there is nothing that we know of that can explain how life came about”, and I have pointed out that despite our own conscious intellect, we still cannot create a living being from scratch.
reblak: Thank you for pointing this out. This was a mistake in presentation. Our present abilities reflect the level of our present society. That has so very little to do with our potential capabilities.

In other words, you have faith that with our wonderful intellect we humans will eventually crack all the codes, and what will that prove? Only that it requires a wonderful intellect to crack the codes. And how does that prove that you don’t need any intellect at all to create the codes?

Reblak: The ‘rules’ operating our Universe are simply the intrinsic effects of a complex but complete unity. The presence of an author is neither needed nor possible. We get hooked up on a fantasy treading that path.

Of course you don’t need an author if you have irrational faith that the complexities of life can be created by an unconscious force that hasn’t a clue what it is doing. But I agree that belief in a sourceless eternal consciousness also requires irrational faith. Fortunately, we are not compelled to choose between two irrational faiths, but are blessed with the alternative of keeping an open mind.

Reblak: You decry faith, cracking on that it bespeaks an irrationality. In some cases that is so, but I declare that if it is entirely dependent on already established fact, it is a totally rational premise and - this type of faith - is often rewarded with (sometimes) irrefutable proof thus demonstrating that particular faith as having been rational in the first place!

We are talking specifically about faith in a supernatural being and faith in blind, unconscious Mother Nature being capable of designs which are so complex that we highly conscious humans cannot explain, let alone replicate them. Both faiths “depend on” an already established fact – namely, that life exists. It is belief in one particular explanation, not the fact, that requires irrational faith.

reblak: A last point: the Big Bang, contrary to your suggestion, is – consciously or unconsciously – a product of the religious tendency imbued into the Royal Society by Sir Isaac Newton during his 20 years reign as President. […]

There are now thousands of scientists who believe in the Big Bang theory, and you know as well as I do that they are not all theists! Just like evolution, the theory is open to theistic and to atheistic interpretation, and both sets of proponents twist it to their liking.