Computer \"reads\" memories... (Humans)

by dhw, Thursday, March 25, 2010, 19:56 (5356 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT (to David): It's like...to me you're saying "Because we can't fathom how life could be created by chance, we MUST have SOME explanation, and my chosen explanation is God." 
My position (and I venture dhw's, tentatively) is that we can never be justified in making that claim.-We're sort of in the same position, but perhaps mine is less sceptical (unusual!) and more evenly balanced (not a criticism) than yours. I can understand perfectly well why David believes in a creator, and I can understand perfectly well why George believes in chance and the natural laws. It's purely a matter of what each individual finds more likely. When I consider the vast collection of independent, working bodies within my own body, and the incomprehensible phenomenon of consciousness and all its ramifications, and the sheer miraculousness of life itself, I simply cannot believe for one minute that it is all the result ... over no matter how many millions of years ... of an unconscious process that began by chance. David has therefore come to the logical conclusion that if it ain't chance, it's design. That's the point at which he stops, and although I think he does assign certain attributes to the designer, he acknowledges that they are purely a matter of personal faith. There are also certain experiences (let's subsume them all under the heading of "paranormal", although I don't like it) which may...just MAY...suggest there is indeed a dimension beyond the material ones we are familiar with. These should not be ignored.-You say that a deity "doesn't explain anything better than chance." But if one can't believe that chance created life, some form of designer does offer a better explanation provided one stops at that point. However, I (and you too, I think) can't stop at that point, and this brings me to the reason why I can also understand perfectly well why George embraces atheism. There is no evidence of a God. I feel as George does that there is no divine power "up there". Despite the pinpoint engineering of life and the functioning, interrelated mechanisms of the universe, our world just seems to go its own random way, which suggests total absence of a deity (or at the most, the presence of an indifferent deity, who might just as well not be there). Intellectually, there is also no avoiding the question of God's own provenance, and if you can believe in a supreme intelligence that either came into being undesigned or has always been there, then you might as well believe that WE came into being undesigned or that life has always been there (BBella's view). I share your opinion that in this respect God offers nothing that chance can't offer. -And so I can't say as you do that "we can never be justified" in embracing a belief. My agnostic dilemma lies in the fact that I see both sides as having an equally strong and equally weak case! Hypotheses like multiple universes or man-made brains mean nothing at the moment. You might just as well say: "Supposing God suddenly reveals himself?" As I said in my response to David, I'm content to keep looking, to wait for new developments, and probably to die without getting any closer to the ultimate truth, but I don't have a problem if others choose for or against design. My only problem is when people who have made their choice hurl ridicule at those who have gone the opposite way, but fail to acknowledge or even recognize the equally vast gaps in their own reasoning.