Far out cosmology: our galaxy is huge (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 15:59 (1465 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Are you assuming there were living species before humans?

dhw: I have no idea. I am merely questioning your assumption that your God’s purpose in designing all these billions of stars and all these millions of life forms was to design H. sapiens.

Why question the fact that evolution lead to humans?

DAVID: logic tells me the extraordinary basis of reality in the complexity of quantum mechanics, and the exquisite engineering of cellular biology requires just such a mind as the one you doubt.

dhw:m Quantum mechanics remains a mystery, and I accept the logic of the design argument. How does that explain the need for your God to create between 100 and 200 thousand million galaxies, and millions of life forms with no connection to humans, in order to produce a single species and its food supply?

Previous life forms evolved to produce humans. The rest is all history produced by God.

dhw: […] your only answer is that it must have been the only way your God could do it.

DAVID: Again you have reverted to faulting God's methods. Analysis through research of what He created will offer explanations and we are given the brains by Him to find them.

dhw: There are two levels here: 1) I regard the sheer enormity and impersonality of the ever changing universe as a major hindrance to belief in a sourceless mind that created and “controls” it. This is a counter to the logic of the design theory. Hence my agnosticism.

It is not counter to design theory: why a Big Bang, followed by amorphous plasma, which then produced matter particles? I don't accept chance. Just because the universe confuses you, don't assume chance arrival of it as we see it now. .

2) If God exists, I do not fault his methods. I question the accuracy of your interpretation of his purpose and his methods. You know this because I have repeated it a hundred times.

It is simple to accept the history as His m ethod.

DAVID (under “far out cosmology”: We know our galaxy seems very unique. These new findings add to the mystery of its formation. but the result is obvious, the Earth is very protected.

dhw: Microcosm/macrocosm. You don’t know why your God designed bad bugs, and you don’t know why he designed the forces that threaten our planet. But you believe that “analysis…will offer explanations.” This puts you very much on a par with Dawkins: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world…..we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural.” Instead of predicting/hoping that your totally opposite beliefs will one day be confirmed, perhaps both of you should face the fact that neither of you has one jot of scientific support for them.

Well said as an agnostic.