More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 31, 2022, 09:01 (576 days ago) @ David Turell

Vocalisation

dhw: You have missed the point as usual: if he was prepared to give us the autonomous ability to do our own form of designing, why would he not be prepared to give cells the same autonomous ability to do their form of designing – which leads to adaptation (you accept a degree of autonomy) and innovation, which leads to speciation?

DAVID: Same weird comparison. How our brain works does not compare to cellular speciation. I didn't miss your strained comparison.

I am not comparing human inventions to cellular innovations! Once more: If God was willing to giving to give humans the autonomous ability to do their own form of designing, why do you think he would not be willing to give cells the autonomous ability to do their own form of designing?

DAVID: You love to talk about your weird God who doesn't care about His goals. i can't accept Him.

dhw: Where in my theories have you found a weird God who doesn’t care? I have followed up your certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, and have suggested that enjoyment and interest may have been his goal. An autonomous free-for-all (perhaps with occasional dabbles) would “follow his goal”, would be far easier than individually designing every single life form, natural wonder etc., and would explain the vast diversity of the ever changing bush of life, which would be far more interesting than a puppet show. (Humans would be the most interesting of all.) Whether he cares for us or not is another question. You follow Adler, who says 50/50.

DAVID: Same description of a very humanized God.

Tiresome. It was you who expressed certainty that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. This offers a perfectly feasible purpose. You moaned that my proposal meant he didn’t care. It doesn't, but your irrelevant comment shows you trying to impose the “very humanized” concept of a God who cares! And you ignore the rest of my post, which challenges your concept of what is “easier” for God to do, and which offers an explanation for the vast diversity of life extant and extinct which makes nonsense of your anthropocentrism.

DAVID: Each IDer's personal take is unknown to me, But they sincerely believe God designed everything in evolution.

dhw: No problem. Just stop pretending that they all support your belief that he designed the brontosaurus and all other “tiny parts” as “an absolute requirement” in preparation for us humans and our food.

DAVID: I don't know their personal interpretations. But they will tell you He designed the brontosaurus.

That is not the point at issue. It is the bold that leads to the illogicalities which “make sense only to God”.

First walking ancestor

DAVID: We don't know Arthropithicus thought levels. Our intelligence doesn't relate to theirs.

dhw: Why do you assume they weren’t intelligent enough to go and look for food? Their own ancestors probably used their intelligence when they took to living in trees!

DAVID: I'm sure they scoured for food. I simply said we cannot assume what intelligence level they had.

You couldn’t think of a reason why our ancestors would have left the trees, and so it had to be “God’s design”. I gave you two simple possibilities – driven by shortage of food in a particular location, or driven by curiosity to explore other sources for their food. Not feasible?

New view of Big Bang

dhw: […] you assume an eternal form of immaterial consciousness without a beginning, so why can’t someone else assume eternal forms of materials and energy constantly creating new combinations which eventually led to the universe we know?

DAVID: Pure materialism reaches mentation!!!

dhw: As unlikely as pure mentation came from nowhere!!!

DAVID: Something or someone had to be thinking at a beginning.

dhw: According to you, supremely sophisticated immaterial thought has existed for ever, without a beginning. This is no more feasible than non-thinking matter and energy existing and combining for ever without a beginning. In the latter case, though, there would have been endless “beginnings”, until one of them produced rudimentary thought which evolved into increasingly sophisticated thought. 50/50?

DAVID: There has to be a first cause.

Agreed. Yours is “pure mentation”. Another is “pure materialism” as described above.

The Big Bang

QUOTE: The good news is that Einstein's theory still holds, but this also means that the mystery of Dark Energy persists for the time being."

DAVID: That means dark matter must exist.

Give something a name, and it turns into an explanation: “dark” means we think it’s there but we know nothing about it. So 90% of the universe consists of something we know nothing about. One might argue that the same applies to “God” (or whatever name you choose). The origin of the universe and of life is a mystery. Something caused both, but we don’t know what, so some folk say “God did it”, and somehow that sounds like an explanation. We even imagine it having human attributes. (David complains because I propose some that are different from his own proposals). In fact there is no one on Earth who can tell us more than the fact that a mysterious unknown something did it.


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