Laetoli footprints (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 12, 2010, 14:27 (5148 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: ...there's definite things I think are reasonable to expect if we are to assert that the universe was designed. What I've detailed are the kinds of things you could expect to see and the nature of the creator based on the kinds of intelligence we are familiar with. None of the things we've uncovered smacks of intense planning and foresight with the exception of the initial big bang.-In your computer world, could the machine process memory, do calculations, provide information if those who designed its programmes couldn't even conceive what memory, calculations, information were? If the universe and life were designed, it seems reasonable to suppose that the designer knew what he was doing when he set up the original mechanism that produced life, reproduction, adaptability and innovation. It's equally conceivable that he didn't know where it was all leading (otherwise he'd have been bored), but it seems to me highly unlikely that the mechanism itself did not require intense planning and foresight ... e.g. that by sticking x, y and z together, he would enable the unit to reproduce, adapt etc. By the same token, the fact that we have memory, consciousness, imagination etc. seems to me to make it likely that if there is or was a designer, he would have the same faculties. Of course we can only go by our human experience, but that suggests that the more complex the invention, the more it requires consciousness, knowledge, planning and foresight. As for faults in the design, they are only evidence that the designer may not be the omnipotent, omniscient being of the main religions, unless he actually planned the faults, or didn't care about them so long as the general design worked OK. Can you name me any human design that will not eventually break down? That is the very nature of everything in the physical world that we know. -As for whether God "interfaces with life", that is indeed the big question following on from whether such "concentrated energy" actually exists/existed. From the history of life as we know it, I would say that technically he may do, in the sense of experimenting here and there (hence the astonishing physical complexities that David keeps drawing our attention to), but otherwise the sheer randomness of the pleasures and pains suggests to me, as it does to you, that a deist God is the most likely.-Finally, putting on my sceptic's hat now, I'm at a loss to understand why the big bang smacks of intense planning and foresight. Since we don't know what went bang, and we don't know what the heck God was up to at the time (if he was there at all), the whole thing might just as well have been an enormous accident. God messing things up in his laboratory, perhaps? But then making the best of a bad job? I must say I find the intricacy of life a more straightforward example of planning and foresight.