Human evolution: we are entirely improbable (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, January 22, 2021, 15:07 (1187 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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.

We are back to no first cause. I don 't accept nothing became something

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...

dhw: 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.”

dhw: 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.

Why? We don't know if any others are there. SETI looks without answers. I assume possible.

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

dhw: 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.”

The evidence of complex designs requires a designing mind. A tornado in a junk yard never makes a 747. For me appealing to chance is totally illogical.