Afterlife: Pinker's skeptical thought (Endings)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 02, 2020, 14:06 (1424 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Thus you maintain your non-belief stance. I deeply appreciate our friendship and the opportunity to proselytize. I fell no frustration from not altering you. If you capitulated, this site might have to end. So once again I will post the point. Something is eternal. If it is energy/matter in its simplest form (plasma) it has become something much more complex. Some force did that. Plasma, while not inert, will stay in that state unless something forces it to change. Your long explanation is fine and complementary, but avoids answering the issue presented. You've done this before. Think about it.

dhw: I have no answer. Nobody has. But that is not the only unanswered question to be considered! Consciousness is something none of us can explain. The only consciousness we know of is that of material creatures like ourselves, and evolution clearly suggests a bottom-up process of development culminating in our own. You laugh to scorn the very idea that this consciousness could be the product of chance. And yet you willingly embrace the idea that consciousness does not need a source, does not need a relationship with materials, can be on an infinitely higher level than our own, has no source and has always been there. Why can’t we see it? It conceals itself. How did you hear about it in the first place? Your fellow humans told you that it is there. How can consciousness exist without a source? “First cause” – which merely means you believe in a conscious mind without a source because you believe in a conscious mind without a source. I have offered you two other equally improbable “first causes”, but their improbability does not make yours any more probable. Your observation about plasma is fine “but avoids answering the issue presented” (how can a universal, conscious mind simply be there for ever?). “You’ve done this before. Think about it.”

My fellow humans simply told me there was a force that caused our reality. They named it 'God', but that is just a name they used. We've agreed there has to be a cause, and you have named three without choosing one. Based on one point, the complexity of the design required, there must be a designer! Which for me makes only one of your three causes possible. A designing mind which is eternal. Chance is not possible. I don't accept any third cause. Panpsychism as straining credulity. It again is the unexplained consciousness of the designer in a spread out form. There has to be a driving force to explain the constant trend from simple to complex. And finally a driving force must have a purpose. Our very improbable appearance cements the point. We are the purpose. I see driving force from a First Cause. How do you explain the increasing complexity we know occurred? You don't.