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

by dhw, Tuesday, July 03, 2018, 11:06 (2336 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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: I'm not surprised at your answer, and your blinkered view of God who plays at no purpose. Why can't God have serious purposes?

The only serious purpose you have mentioned is his desire to have a relationship with humans, although he keeps himself hidden. What other serious purpose do you have in mind? And before you revert to your reluctance to “humanize” God, if he is human enough to want a relationship with humans, why can’t he be human enough to want to create a great changing spectacle of life that will fill the void? And finally, why is the latter view more blinkered and less serious than the view that all he wanted to produce was humans?

DAVID: That mechanism could go off in many directions. I see directionality.

dhw : 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: So why/how did all of this organized purposeful reality appear? Back to chance!

As above, there are two theories (chance and God) that I find equally hard to swallow, and that is why I remain an agnostic.