Human evolution: we are entirely improbable (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, January 22, 2021, 09:30 (1183 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Yes, but we can still keep learning as I put entries here, and add to the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Fair summary?

dhw: Yes to “keep learning” – for which I must reiterate my gratitude – and to the arguments for design (see the theory of cellular intelligence), but emphatically no to “beyond a reasonable doubt” when it comes to the origin of whatever does the designing. i.e. the existence of an unknown, unknowable, eternally conscious, immaterial mind without a source but with infinite powers of psychokinesis.

DAVID: We are discussing the need for a mind that can create by specific designs. Design keeps you agnostic. Why? Design requires a designer.

I shouldn’t need to tell you of all people why I accept the logic of the arguments for design. But I remain agnostic because it is not logical to assume that life and consciousness have to be designed, but the living, conscious designer does not have to be designed.

DAVID: Let's look at a philosophic view just published about our improbability:
https://nautil.us/issue/95/escape/is-life-special-just-because-its-rare-rp?mc_cid=d526f...

There is nothing in this article that we haven’t discussed before, though it’s very nicely written. The conclusion is extraordinarily woolly:

"We cannot imagine a universe without meaning. We are not talking necessarily about some grand cosmic meaning, or a divine meaning bestowed by God, or even a lasting, eternal meaning…."

Good to hear, but here is the grand finale:

“And given our existence, our universe must have meaning, big and small meanings. I have not met any of the life forms living out there in the vast cosmos beyond Earth. But I would be astonished if some of them were not intelligent. And I would be further astonished if those intelligences were not, like us, making science and art and attempting to take stock and record this cosmic panorama of existence. We share with those other beings not the mysterious, transcendent essence of vitalism, but the highly improbable fact of being alive.”

No faith in a God, but pretty solid faith in the existence of ETs who are just like us! I'm a bit surprised by your lack of comment on this.

DAVID: How do you explain our existence? My answer is not by chance!

That is not an explanation. That is the dismissal of an explanation. Just as others would “explain” existence as being “not by an unknown, unknowable, eternally conscious, immaterial mind without a source but with infinite powers of psychokinesis.”