Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, July 02, 2018, 13:36 (2336 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If simplicity is what you’re after, why not consider the idea that he just wanted to create the on-going spectacle of ever changing life forms that has actually happened? Done by the invention of a single mechanism. And you can still allow for the odd dabble, the odd experiment now and then if he feels like it.

DAVID: Your usual approach. Simple without direction. Sounds like Darwin. I see God's purpose in producing humans. And to set up your mechanism without the guidelines to achieve that purpose is fruitless. A free inventive mechanism to produce evolution would dash off in many directions, which is way you consider the bush of life. I don't, I see purpose everywhere.

I am surprised that you cannot see that evolution has dashed off in many directions (99% of which have led to obliteration). And I am surprised that you cannot see that every organism has its own purpose of survival (Darwinian is not a synonym for wrong) and/or improvement. And I am surprised that the one purpose you see everywhere – in the 99% of extinct species, lifestyles and natural wonders, and in the still existing knotty nest, 360-degree eye, fishy camouflage, butterfly migration, parasitic egg-laying etc. – is the production of the sapiens brain. And I am surprised that you refuse to contemplate the possibility that your God might have created a mechanism to produce the ever changing bush of life because he wanted to produce an ever changing bush of life.

DAVID: That mechanism could go off in many directions. I see directionality.
The mechanism did go off in many directions. Maybe that was what your God wanted,

dhw: In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.

DAVID: The case for a universal mind is clear.

I do not find any clarity in the concept of a single conscious mind that has no possible source, is vast enough to create and encompass a universe, and remains hidden.