More "miscellany" (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 12, 2022, 16:09 (385 days ago) @ dhw

A spider hides under water

dhw: When you told us you were certain that your God enjoyed creating and was interested in his creations, did you dismiss your own belief because it meant he entertained himself and chuckled? In any case, your dismissal of my different, logical theories doesn’t alter the fact that you have your God specially designing the body hairs of one species of spider as part of “the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and their food! (But of course, you can’t explain the connection – it only makes sense to your God.)

DAVID: Same niggling complaints based on my guesses about God's nature, when all I did was politely respond to your questions. Please remember guesses or just that, guesses, never anything near an actual theory.

dhw: All of our theories are “guesses” in that they are unproven. Your guess that your God “helped” favours the theory that he designed the body hairs of the spider as “part of the goal of evolving [=designing] humans” plus food, but your guess (expressed as certainty) that God enjoys creating and watches his creations with interest provides a perfectly logical basis for an alternative theory relating to purpose, not just nature.

Still all useless guesswork

Denton

QUOTES: “According to Denton, the cosmos is stunningly fit not just for cellular life, not just for carbon-based animal life, and not even just for air-breathing animals, but especially for bipedal, land-roving, technology-pursuing creatures of our general physiological design. In short, the cosmos is specifically fit for creatures like us.

ID comment: "a vast suite of chemical and physical parameters were precisely set. These parameters are “uniquely fit” for creatures like ourselves, as Denton shows.

dhw: Why “especially” and “uniquely” and “specifically fit for creatures like us”. The parameters have been fit for every creature that ever existed! Otherwise they would not have existed. This must be one of the daftest reasons ever concocted for claiming that we humans “occupy a central place in the great cosmic drama of being”. At least there is some sense in the argument that our unique mental faculties make us special, but the fact that our solar system (why the whole cosmos?) allows us and every other organism to live puts us on level terms with the duckbilled platypus. However, obviously I haven’t read the book and can only comment on what is written here.

DAVID: Denton is a Ph.D. & M.D. Like Adler and Schroeder he is one of the authorities who shapes my views.

dhw: They are no more “authorities” than Dawkins and Dennett.

Do you accept any authority but yourself?