Afterlife (Endings)

by dhw, Sunday, January 13, 2013, 17:08 (4114 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So my mind is not closed to the possibility of a UI of some kind. But...and of course the agnostic has to come up with a "but"...the theory that all these mysteries can be solved by an even greater mystery ... a form of eternally existing intelligence that does not depend on materials, is as endless as this universe and perhaps others too, is mindful of tiny specks like us ... is far, far beyond the reach of my intellect and imagination, and I have no intuition that tells me it must be there, let alone interested in us. -DAVID: I've cherry-picked your observations to point out the gap in your thinking. It doesn't require 'intuition' to realize that there is something eternal. -Cherry-picking is OK, but you shouldn't chuck out two thirds of the cherries you've picked! I have long ago accepted that there is something eternal. But not that it is an "intelligence", let alone one that is mindful of us!
 
DAVID: Nothing comes from nothing, so there has always been something. Back to the First Cause argument, recognized since the ancient Greeks.
 
We have agreed that the first cause is energy. Recap: first cause energy may be self-aware, "intelligent" without self-awareness (a theory I offered under "Panpsychism"), or completely devoid of intelligence (one form of atheism).-DAVID: Life requires complicated codes based on an enormous amount of information. Only intellect or mind can create that information.-Complete agreement with your first sentence. I would rephrase the second: It seems almost inconceivable that this information could have been created by anything other than intellect or mind. I would then continue: ...just as it seems almost inconceivable that eternal and infinite energy can always have had or may have spontaneously engendered its own intellect or mind. 
 
DAVID: That is the creative nubbin of my thinking. I can't imagine or have any intuition about a UI.
 
But many people do. BBella, in my view quite rightly, attributes many people's faith to personal experience, and that I think includes an intuitive connection to a higher power.
 
DAVID: I only know it HAS to exist. It is required to fit the logical conclusion that life's underlying information had to come from some thought process. -May I quote you: "It requires a strong faith to have faith in a concealed God." There is more to your belief than logic.-DAVID: Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean it is not there. -Agreed. But if neither intellect nor imagination nor intuition can provide grounds for faith, what can?-DAVID: So let's leave out our ability to imagine the UI, and agree it is a logical endpoint to our study of the cause of the real world. The final mystery is meant to be, behind the curtain of quantum uncertainty. Never to be completely understood, but as a challenge from the great UI mind to ours to keep trying. 
My whole concept has a nice 'fit' within itself. At the top is the UI that we really cannot 'know' and underlying all of it is the quicksand of quantum confusion. And some of us can develop 'faith' out of this monstrous muddle. Tony has, I have, can you?-I love it! "Quantum confusion" and "monstrous muddle", and you invite me to step behind the "curtain of quantum uncertainty" into the "quicksand". Well, I might do if you spread a chocolate carpet of evidence over the quicksand!-DAVID (under "How epigenetics works"): You will never have a black and white conclusion. There is none, and never will be. I think you are on your picket fence forever.-If, as you believe, there is an afterlife, I would expect to learn more. If there is no afterlife, it won't matter. Meanwhile, I love this life, get a great deal of pleasure, insight and information from our discussions on the subject, and will almost certainly remain on my picket fence unless someone can come up with a more convincing argument than: "It is concealed. It must be accepted on faith."