Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, December 14, 2014, 17:57 (3420 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Sunday, December 14, 2014, 18:04

dhw: May I take it that you accept the irrationality of BOTH hypotheses, and that the hypothesis of consciousness evolving from ever changing matter is not something from nothing?
DAVID: The only thing we agree upon is energy in some state as a first cause. One of the things we both know is that the source cause of consciousness is unknown. A thought is not matter and how it arises from an intact brain is a matter of great controversy, which his why Nagel wrote his recent book. And I stick with the position that creating a universe requires planning in advance and only a conscious planner can do that, not a chance event.-You have every right to stick with what you believe. But we are having a discussion, and the alternative hypothesis I have offered is that consciousness may have evolved out of the never ending process of mindless energy transmuting itself into matter. You appeared to claim that energy could not transmute itself into matter - which runs counter to the claim you made earlier that matter IS energy. So please clarify your statement: “Formless energy, a plasma of potential particles does not appear to be a source of organized matter following laws of development such as this universe demonstrates.” If you stand by your original statement, then I trust you will agree that my alternative hypothesis is not something from nothing. -dhw: Thank you for continuing to mull. I do not “want few limits”. I have an open mind, but have proposed autonomy as a logical explanation for the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution (whether started by God or not). You, however, do want many limits, because you regard an autonomous mechanism as a threat to your anthropocentric interpretation of your God's approach to evolution.-DAVID: Not a threat, just illogical, once it is accepted that everything is under conscious planning.-Of course it would be illogical to claim that the cell is autonomous if your basic premise is that everything has been planned in order to create humans. It's your basic premise that I'm questioning, as the unknown extent of the cell's autonomy is the crux of the inventive mechanism hypothesis. The greater the autonomy, the more higgledy-piggledy the bush and the less convincing the hypothesis that humans were the original purpose of the process.