Afterlife: Pinker's skeptical thought (Endings)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 03, 2020, 18:55 (1632 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Let’s try again. We have a mystery: the origin of life and all its complexities, including consciousness. You claim that these can only have been designed. And so your solution to the mystery is an even greater mystery: a conscious designing mind that was not designed but has existed for ever somehow somewhere nowhere. You have even called it the “unexplained” consciousness of the designer. You ask me to explain complexity, as if that were enough to invalidate any alternative theory, and in the same breath you say you can’t explain your own solution! But I take issue with you on the question of “increasing” complexity. I don’t see that as a problem: once single cells began to merge into cell communities, and these learned to cope with or exploit ever changing conditions, increasing complexity seems to me to be a natural process.

There is no question that complexity increased from the unexplained origin of life. The bold suggests somehow or other those cells 'learned' to respond to changing conditions and that somehow made them into more complex organisms. It is all made-up fairy tale for me.
learning implies a definite mental process. How? What that leaves unexplained is the use of all left handed amino acids (which is an unnatural collection from normal processes) and the appearance of enzymes, which are giant molecules of a very specific designed shape, without which no organic reactions can occur quickly (think of each taking millions of years).

dhw: It is the ORIGIN of the first cells – themselves enormously complex – that I regard as the mystery. I have offered you three possible first causes: your own unexplained and inexplicable mystery, the second is chance, and the third a form of panpsychism. Bearing in mind that we cannot possibly know what preceded the beginning of our universe, you refuse to consider the possibility of first cause energy and matter eternally forming new combinations until at last there was a stroke of luck. And you refuse to consider undesigned “primitive” material consciousness that evolves from bottom-up, preferring to believe in undesigned total consciousness that has always been there and works top-down. I find all three first causes equally difficult to believe in.

Chance does not create the complexity of design present, and you agree. Panpsychism invokes consciousness from nothing with no real explanation, but implies the necessity for a mental
deigning for advances. The bolded is frankly weird. The universe was initially plasma: positively charged atoms without their electrons, forced to be that way from extreme heat or strong electromagnetism. As those forces diminish atoms can regain their electrons and form inorganic compounds. Very simple organic compounds exist naturally in the universe. The next step is the requirement for enzymes to make more complex organic compounds to support an organization that can be life. I showed you James Tour's article. Enzymes from chance combination is sheer lunacy. Without a chemical education you are simply conjuring up pipe dreams. What is left is the obvious need for a designing mind in control of the processes that DID create life. Belief in a preexisting mind requires simple logic, nothing more.