Human evolution; our complex speech mechanism (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 05, 2018, 11:53 (2180 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: According to Guth and his cohorts there is no 'before' before the Big Bang, proven mathematically in a paper presented in 2002 at Hawkings 60th birthday party/ symposium, my book, page 63. Put simply, time starts with the BB. Just as life starts with the first functional living cell. Both starts are followed by an evolutionary process which are too complex to be the result of chance. If there is a cause for each event, it is simpler to attribute them to one source than to conjure up two causes for two such pivotal creations.

dhw: A strange volte face. According to you, your God caused the BB, and so he existed before the BB. Before, now and after are one concept of time. Nobody can possibly prove anything about what happened before the BB (if it happened). I agree that one cause is simpler than two causes. The one cause may be an eternal and infinite universe of energy and matter constantly changing itself. No, I don’t believe it, and I don’t disbelieve it, just as I don’t believe or disbelieve in a single, conscious, sourceless, eternal mind. Maybe the complex evolutionary process was created (top down), or maybe it evolved (bottom up).

DAVID: All I presented has appeared here before. If bottom up, from what, and what pushed it to evolve?

Yes, we have discussed it many times. Bottom up from eternally changing combinations of materials. But I can't tell you how they might have acquired the basic consciosuness to form life, any more than you can tell me how a sourceless, universal, conscious mind can simply have been there for ever. Two first cause hypotheses that are as inexplicable as each other. Enough to make a thinker embrace agnosticism!