Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, September 17, 2018, 15:06 (2257 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm with dhw. Choosing to be neutral is a valid option. It means abandoning the thought of first cause as a valid consideration.

dhw: Thank you for your first statement. No thanks for your second statement. My neutrality concerns the nature of the first cause: either it is your magical God or it is an impersonal universe that magically produced life. I find it impossible to choose between the two forms of magic.

DAVID: But there is no third option, and God is a much more logical option than the alchemy of inorganic sources from an 'impersonal universe'. As for your dislike of my second statement what made the impersonal universe but a first cause?

dhw: The choice is between a conscious first cause (your God) and a non-conscious first cause (an impersonal universe). Neither was “made”. You understandably claim that our life and consciousness and all our powers are too complex to have arisen without a designer. And yet you claim that it is logical for life and consciousness, in the form of a living, conscious God (who remains hidden) with powers infinitely greater than our own, to exist without having been designed. Wonderland logic.

Of course the logic here is 'wonderland'. Logic requires God is eternal

DAVID: Logically I strongly doubt inanimate material can self-organize into living matter. It is a matter of complexity. Life is so much more complex in organization than inanimate matter.

dhw: I should have been more specific with my “some form of intelligence”, because self-organizing does not preclude intelligence (I’m thinking of the atheistic form of panpsychism). I meant the single mind you call God.

DAVID: Now you have substituted the magical appearance of intelligence in any matter. The appearance of intelligence requires the origination of information which is not descriptive but organizational. Now you have three magics from which to choose.

dhw: Substituted for what? The choice is between your magically intelligent God and magically intelligent matter, either innately intelligent – panpsychism – or having originated by chance, though in both cases evolving. “Logically I strongly doubt” any form of magic, which is why I am an agnostic, but as I keep admitting, I am wrong one way or the other.

Granted, and logical.