Quantum Physics: conscious universe (General)

by dhw, Sunday, June 03, 2018, 09:16 (2364 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I suspect that what you really mean is that I haven’t accepted your conclusion that God did it.

DAVID: Of course you haven't. Panpsychism is a version of consciousness, chance is not conscious. What is left?

dhw: I haven’t what? You tell me I have accepted that consciousness is required. I do indeed agree that consciousness is required for the complexities of life and evolution, but I don’t know whether the origin of that consciousness is God (conscious), chance (not conscious), or atheistic panpsychism (i.e. a primitive consciousness in materials, which evolves into the more complex forms we now know). Please tell me what is the point at issue.

DAVID: Your now bolded last sentence in the comment to which I responded: "I suspect that what you really mean is that I haven’t accepted your conclusion that God did it." Of course you haven't. And you keep repeating the poor, silly substitute for consciousness, panpsychism as another point for discussion.

“Poor and silly” is precisely the sort of language that hardened atheists use of theism. Please don’t stoop to that level. Panpsychism can be taken for the universal consciousness that you call God, or it can be inverted. Your brand of top-down panpsychism has a single, eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful conscious mind that comes from nowhere and can create a material universe out of nothing except its own immaterial self. I don’t know why that should be regarded as more or less “poor and silly” than the bottom-up idea that an impersonal universe has always been there and rudimentary consciousnesses of materials evolved into increasingly complex consciousnesses, or an infinite amount of matter during an eternity of time eventually was bound to produce the combination of materials that gave rise to life, consciousness and evolution. I find all of these explanations equally difficult to believe in, but acknowledge that I am wrong one way or another. That is why I would never call any of them “poor and silly”.