Contingent evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, July 03, 2014, 22:41 (3578 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Do not tell me information. They do that automatically now and from the first cell.
dhw: That is your assumption and should not be stated as if it were a fact.
-DAVID: Whatever method got to the first cell, at that point it is a fair assumption the complete cell acted upon information it received and used information it had in order to respond.-Yes, that is how intelligence operates! The organism receives information, processes it and uses it to communicate with other organisms, take decisions etc. What we don't know is how it acquired the ability in the first place ... and that applies all the way through from bacteria to humans. It also applies to your God, with the added mystery that if he was nothing but pure energy, what information was there for him to receive and use prior to the formation of matter, and how did he acquire the ability to use information that didn't even exist? -********-DAVID: And again I ask the question, tell me 'how' the something could know anything, unless it was an organized intellect.
dhw: It could not. That is why I am questioning whether the "something" that caused the "energies of the universe" knew what it was doing. In other words, when did consciousness come into being ... before or after the Big Bang?-DAVID: Based on my assumptions that quantum mechanics requires consciousness, that the reality we live in has a base layer of 'quantumness' that 'creates' our reality, and the universe come from quantum fluctuations from eternal virtual particles (see my Davies essay from yesterday), then quantum consciousness comes first and is eternal. -You might as well say that based on your assumption that whatever created our reality must have been conscious, God exists. An atheist will assume that whatever created our reality was not conscious, and so God does not exist. Such assumptions do not provide a basis for belief. They ARE belief. I have opened a new thread to comment on the Paul Davies essay.