E. Coli vs. Linux (Humans)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 12:06 (5301 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Why so negative? If life appeared, not by accident, then, believing as I do, why can't you take the next step? The intelligence is a 'force' of some sort. How do you view it?-The short answer is that I can't view it. This is the perennial problem of the agnostic. Our neutrality is incomprehensible to both theist and atheist, as each of you expects us to believe in something that is basically unbelievable. The explanation HAS to be negative. I can't believe in a mind-bogglingly improbable accident capable of producing mind-bogglingly complex organisms and systems, including life out of non-life and consciousness out of unconsciousness. Nor can I believe in a mind-bogglingly improbable, inconceivable, immaterial, unknowable, birthless, deathless universal intelligence. I acknowledge the possibility of a world beyond the one I know, as suggested by all forms of "spiritual" experiences, and some of these experiences are integral to my own way of life, but I also acknowledge the possibility that they may derive from the physical world we know, in ways which we do not yet understand. Non-belief in the one is no reason for believing in the other, because to believe in either you have to exclude reason and give yourself over to faith. Very few atheists accept that, whereas most theists do. And so the answer to your question why I can't take the next step (in either of these two directions) is simply that I lack faith.-*** I have just read BBella's response. The question, as always, is whether the force/fabric/soup/resource is conscious of itself or not. If you think it is, you're on the side of the theists, and if you think it isn't, you're with the atheists. If you can't make up your mind, you're on the fence with me!