Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, December 15, 2014, 17:29 (3413 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...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. ..... 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.
DAVID: I feel my statement is quite clear. It is my position that the cause of the universe can be nothing less than a planning consciousness which is eternal. Your suggestion is that consciousness can somehow appear out of matter which develops sort of by itself out of formless energy. A wonderful imaginary scenario of ifs, ands, and buts. Just how can that happen? Please describe the process, if you can. It sounds like something completely ethereal. -One can hardly imagine a scenario more ethereal that the eternally conscious energy you call God. If, as you claim, “everything is energy. Matter is a form of energy. Energy is all there really is”, I don't know why you should cast doubt on the possibility of matter developing “out of formless energy”. What else could it have developed out of if everything is energy? As for consciousness, I can no more describe the process than you can describe how first cause energy acquired consciousness. You can only fall back on the meaningless formula of an uncaused cause, as if somehow energy and consciousness were one and the same thing.
 
DAVID: All I can say is your alternative hypothesis is a good try in avoiding the obvious. What we have is too complex (the universe and its life) to simply appear out of nowhere.-And that is why I have pointed out that if everything is energy, and matter is a form of energy, the alternative I am offering cannot be called something out of nothing (or nowhere).-dhw: 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.DAVID: Your comment is absolutely correct. You and I can never ascertain IM limits in our current state of knowledge. With enough autonomy we could have had two-headed humans. The skies are the limit with complete IM autonomy. But instead we have a nice balance of nature, and some fascinating interlocking life styles from a very inventive living process, much of which obviously requires advanced planning so all the new parts of new organisms work well together and at times for each other.

We have already agreed that organisms cannot do what organisms cannot do (an autonomous intelligence will also have its limits), and that the environment sets its own limits which cannot be broken. You believe in free will, which = autonomy, but that doesn't mean humans can flap their ears and fly. You are right that nature balances itself out, in the sense that what is useful survives (natural selection). However, the article on horizontal gene transfer makes it clear (as does the extinction of 99% of all species) that during the process of cooperative innovation things are not always nicely balanced:
 
“Clearly genes have all kinds of ways of journeying between the kingdoms of life: sometimes in large and sudden leaps; other times in incremental steps over millennia. Granted, many of these voyages are probably futile: a translocated gene finds itself to be utterly useless in its new home, or becomes such a nuisance to its genetic neighbours that it is evicted. Laterally transferred genes can be imps of chaos, gumming up or refashioning a genome in a way that is ultimately disastrous - perhaps even lethal to a species. In a surprising number of instances, however, wayfaring genes make a new life for themselves, becoming successful enough to change the way an organism behaves and steer its evolution.” -Even if your God designed the mechanism in the first place, it still sounds to me more like higgledy-piggledy than “advanced planning”.