philosophy of science: meaning and functions (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, September 30, 2018, 11:00 (2246 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: […] faith is based on reason.

DHW: Up to a point. It is reasonable to assume that life had an origin. But .. the moment you BELIEVE in any one explanation ... you have to go beyond reason.

TONY: Not so. Darwin observed differences, and reasoned that those differences happened over time through reproduction and isolation. We see complexity and reason that it is too much for chance. […]

You omitted the three explanations of life’s origin that I was referring to! I will therefore repeat them: an unknown mind called God, the creative genius of chance, the evolving intelligence of materials. Belief in any of these requires faith beyond reason.

DHW: But by definition it [first cause] does not have to be God. It can be an impersonal and unconscious universe of energy and matter.

TONY: How can impersonal and unconscious have a frame of reference for personality and consciousness?

DAVID: What makes an argument for God are the obvious requirements for a thinking mind: an explanation for fine tuning, the origin of life, the complexity of living biology [etc.].

Once more: I have no more idea how personality and consciousness, or the complexities of life, can arise from impersonal materials than I have of how personality and consciousness and a designing mind can always have been there, without a source, for ever and ever in the form of your God. Hence my agnosticism.

TONY: I've never disagreed that God has emotions or thoughts that are humanesque. Like David, I think 'his ways are higher than our ways', but that does not make them non-relatable. I think David and I disagree slightly on the degree of how relatable they are.

DAVID: My disagreement with Tony is more than slight. God's personality can only be imagined based on how we think and what we see in his works. "Imagined" is only slightly relatable.

And:

DAVID: He has to be imagined from what we know He has presented. Like the Wizard of Oz, He is the man behind the curtain. Why do you think Adler warns about the difference in His personality […]?

One of the great moments of world literature! Of course, Oz was not a wizard after all. But I agree: if God exists, we can only imagine him by looking at his works: the great higgledy-piggledy bush of life extant and extinct, including humans “in his image”, creating their own pains and pleasures. And we can only imagine his purpose: perhaps a spectacle to relieve his boredom and isolation? After all, in spite of your hero Adler, you agree that God has our thoughts and his logic is like ours.

DHW: How would watching his son grow “allow” him to create bacteria? And if your God could expand his experience through other spiritual beings, why do you think he bothered with the dodo (extinct) or the duckbilled platypus (extant)? Did they enable him to “grow”?

TONY: I think you are trying to connect unconnected ideas. […] Since when does someone not gain experience/knowledge through the process of creation? I think flora and fauna has purpose, but I also see traces of sheer joy in creation. I think the better question is, why shouldn't he create things that are simply whimsical and fun?

I love it. You are coming closer and closer to my hypothesis that your God created material life as a spectacle for himself to enjoy. And I will also go along with you that the spectacle would widen his experience through pleasures and pains unknown to the spiritual world (unless you think, for example, that spirits have sex, eat chocolate, play cricket, or die of cancer).

DHW: I’m not asking you to believe it, but just to say if you think it is possible. (Please don’t forget your agreement that initially, for his very first offspring, my “idea of boredom and/or loneliness is likely spot on”.)

TONY: I do not think so. While 'anything is possible', if that were the way he is, why not just wipe the slate clean and start over after a rebellion?

He “grows” and learns through the ever-changing spectacle, which you agree may well have begun with his desire to end his boredom and/or loneliness. He may have intervened if the spectacle itself became boring (Chixculub) or he didn’t like the way it was heading (Noah’s flood). How does that invalidate the hypothesis of the on-going spectacle?

DHW: If God exists, I would certainly accept that he used science and maths. But the logic we are discussing here concerns purpose, not means.

TONY: That is truth. To understand that, you have to look at something deeper, something you have generally refused to acknowledge: love.

I am constantly acknowledging love, and even asked you a few days ago whether your love for your family had no meaning or relevance without your having faith in something bigger than yourself. How does “love” counteract the logic of your God continuing to relieve his initial boredom/loneliness by creating the on-going spectacle of material life, filled as it is with love and hate, pain and pleasure etc.?