Cosmology: Inflation theory under attack part 3 (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 23, 2017, 14:16 (2587 days ago) @ John Kalber

Reblak appears not to read my responses to his posts (which are a mixture of agreement and disagreement), but as his reply to David touches on many of the points I have also raised, I hope you'll both forgive me for sticking in my agnostic oar – sometimes for and sometimes against his arguments.

David: How do you know our universe is perfect? It is certainly very dangerous to life, except where it seems protected on Earth.

Reblak: This is easily dealt with. For something to be seen as imperfect requires a comparison. In a comparison, we may be able to select weak points. The Universe stands alone so cannot be ‘compared’. It has no faults as far as I can see.

“It has no faults as far as I can see” depends on your personal definition of perfection, imperfection and faults. You are quite right that there can be no comparison. That is why there is absolutely no point in imposing any of these concepts on it. I’ll repeat what I said in my earlier response: The universe is what it is and does what it does. That’s it.

Reblak: Being virtually automatic, it has no consciousness, beyond a measure of ‘direction’ generated in sub-atomic and chemical awareness in differing states of being. Until the advent of life, there could be no conscious awareness.

Here you have touched on another subject I have raised in my responses: panpsychism, and the crucial question is precisely the degree of awareness or consciousness (I am not talking of human self-awareness) that may or may not be present in all materials. Do you believe it is sufficient to put together all the components necessary for the enormously complex mechanisms of life, reproduction, and the capacity for evolution leading from bacteria to the human brain? Such belief requires ignorance of these complexities (which seems unlikely in someone as learned as yourself) or a mighty degree of faith.

Reblak: What part does this murder play in suggesting that God set the rules? Surely no God would settle for a maximum of cruelty being inflicted on terrified, quite innocent victims. It’s is all 'Mother Natures' work and this ‘behaviour’ is the only possible way. Only ‘blind’ nature would allow literally any form of life the chance of survival. It can’t avoid it.

Since you clearly find this “maximum of cruelty” as repugnant as I do, I wonder how you square it with your personal concept of a “perfect” universe.

Reblak: David posits his God as the creator who uses evolution as the medium of creation. That surely means, leaving God to one side for a moment, that since its 'creation' there has been no need for God to intervene. He must have set the laws that guide nature in all its functions.

This, as David says, is a deist interpretation of God, and provides a theistic explanation for all the cruelties, which I for one find perfectly logical. Once more, then, the question of whether he exists or not boils down not to his possible nature but to whether you have sufficient faith in what you call “sub-atomical and chemical awareness” to believe that it is capable of producing the mechanisms described above – a question which you consistently ignore. NB This is a major factor in my own agnosticism, since I do not have that faith.

Reblak: This leaves 'Mother Nature' appearing to be doing it unaided, but – for some, that is not so. They believe God implemented all the 'know how' at outset. Nonetheless, David chooses to believe that his God is not actually all knowing, all powerful, nor absolutely perfect! That seems a fair representation of David's view.

David has replied that his God may have limits. At other times he says his God is in total control. His view appears to change according to whatever objections are raised to his hypotheses.

Reblak: Neither does it account for the evolution of homo sapiens through a very long period of hominids. Was this God entertaining itself, mucking about with early such lifeforms for millions of years until hitting upon making us? Or was it 'Mother Nature' wending her tortuous, largely automatic way through a web of possibility [which is still in progress].

A point I have made over and over again, and to which David is unable to give what I would regard as a logical reply.

Reblak: So - it’s twaddle. All it means is that, for emotional convenience, by simply assuming God’s existence, we can attribute solutions we cannot otherwise find - to a mythical godhead that we invent and empower. Pure superstition – no evidence – just magic. Curiously, apply these assumptions of ‘arcane’ ability directly in favour of 'Mother Nature' and the problems disappear! Well – almost!

A lovely final twinkle. But from my view on the agnostic fence, it's not even “almost”! You are suggesting that the solutions we cannot otherwise find (especially to the problems of origin outlined above, but also to unexplained psychic phenomena) lie in blind, unconscious, chance-directed “Mother Nature”. Once more, if you believe that, you need just as much faith as you need to believe in “Mother Nature’s” other identity as a seeing, conscious, purpose-directed God.