Cosmology: Inflation theory under attack part 3 (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 02, 2017, 12:26 (2365 days ago) @ John Kalber

Hi reblak. Before I respond to your post, may I please ask you to be more direct and concise in your own responses. If I reproduce and respond to every point you raise, we shall have Parts One, Two, Three and Four! Apologies if this sounds schoolmasterly, but it makes for more manageable discussion if we narrow the focus and stay within the given framework (approx. 900 words maximum).

reblak: In the case of evolution you assume limits to the power of 'Mother Nature', in that ‘She’ may not be solely responsible for the emergence of ‘life and everything’, yet you consider, without a shred of evidence, attributing that power to a made up God you cannot actually believe in!

I don’t “assume” anything. You have said ‘She’ is unconscious, though there is a “sub-atomic and chemical awareness in differing states of being”. I asked you if you thought this awareness was “sufficient to put together all the components for the enormously complex mechanisms of life, reproduction and the capacity for evolution leading from bacteria to the human brain.” You have described organismal "awareness", apparently sourceless in-built instructions and rules of engagement that make those complexities automatically, and then conclude that if there is no superpower involved, your unconscious Nature “must be fully responsible”. Of course, if you are right, you are right. Again in Part Two: “If, as I affirm, these building blocks are supplemented automatically, nothing in the way of a directing intelligence is required.” That is the IF I am questioning! I’ll come back to this later, but there is no scientific evidence for your belief that there is a sub-atomical and chemical awareness which can in time automatically produce organs and organisms so complex that our finest minds are still trying to unravel their workings. This is pure faith. I am not propagating any belief of my own – I remain open-minded because I can’t accept ANY of the basic premises (David’s conscious God, the creative genius of chance, or that of your unconscious ‘Mother Nature’). Not accepting does not, however, mean rejecting.

Dhw: “The universe is what it is and does what it does. That’s it.”
Reblak: “This tells me nothing. You do not accept that nature does everything, especially life. Why wouldn’t it? How the Dickens can you know?”

Firstly, you have taken my remark completely out of context. You say the universe is perfect, and then tell us: “It has no faults as far as I can see.” What is your point in calling it “perfect”? Your comment is clearly subjective and based on no conceivable criterion. THAT is why I said the universe is what it is. Secondly, as above, I do not know if blind, unconscious nature can or can't produce all the complexities of life. You are the one with the fixed belief.

Reblak: Nature is not chance directed and there is no reason to think she is. Whilst consciousness does not pertain there is always an element of atomic and chemical awareness at work.

I have several times mentioned my panpsychist hypothesis, but you have never responded. This may be a point in common between us, but I find your own hypothesis somewhat confusing – for instance, organisms (and chemicals) are aware but not conscious. I see the terms as synonymous, but awareness/consciousness exists in different degrees. Basically, the proposal is that all matter has some form of mental component, or consciousness/awareness. In inorganic materials this is rudimentary, but it entails consciousness of the presence of other materials, and of interactive effects. This consciousness is enhanced as materials combine and experience new effects, and in due course it reaches the point at which combined materials produce the intelligence (ability to use the information of which they are conscious) to create rudimentary forms of life which can reproduce and crucially – in time – combine into other forms of life. From then on, evolution is directed by the interaction between random environmental changes and organisms that either adapt, perish, or invent new combinations to exploit new opportunities. In contrast to top-down theistic evolution, it is a natural bottom-up progression. But the hypothesis depends entirely on the belief that inorganic matter has a degree of consciousness which can expand so much as to eventually produce our own human degrees of self-consciousness. Does this correspond to your own hypothesis or not? If not, what are the differences? (NB for me it is a hypothesis, not a belief.)

The subject of whether “each and every nuance of feeling” etc. is created by the brain is that of dualism v materialism, which we have discussed at great length on this forum, and which David and I are still discussing on two current threads; the subject of the “aura” links up with the much discussed work of Sheldrake and others, but again I don’t know why you mention it here. Telekinesis and other psychic powers are another fascinating subject we have discussed and will continue to discuss, but we can’t cover everything at the same time! Hence my plea to keep these posts concise and geared to particular points. (There are three here: faith in the ability of rudimentary awareness and automatic “rules of engagement” to produce the complexities of life; the pointlessness of calling the universe “perfect”; the hypothesis of rudimentary consciousness in materials evolving into organic intelligence.)