Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 13:50 (2046 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: Science is restricted to the material, observable world, and freely acknowledges that there are loads of things it cannot see or explain, such as the origin of life and of consciousness. So what is it the “best evidence” for? Your personal solution of the mysteries: faith in an unknown sourceless God whose first creation was Jesus Christ and whose purpose is his own growth and development? See "philosophy of science" on the same subject.

TONY: Does it? I mean, science has pretty much tried to claim that it can explain everything as either some sort of chemical soup or fluctuating quanta.

My fault for bad wording. Science doesn’t claim anything. It is individual scientists who embrace materialism, but many individual scientists freely acknowledge their ignorance, as above. Meanwhile, getting back to the question of what science is the best evidence for:

TONY: The best evidence for me is when you have two unrelated quantities, regardless of type, that must interact in specified ways in an exact manner in order for their functions to be achieved. Flower's UV signalling and bees' vision, or a plant's inbreeding prevention mechanism...etc.

Yes, the fact that organisms interact and survive through precisely achieved functions suggests design. Does this mean that science is the best evidence for a sourceless conscious mind with the power to create (or instruct Jesus to create spirit workers to create) the material universe and material life?

TONY: By the way, your theory of panpsychism is not too terribly off base as for how I imagine God came into existence: slowly self-organizing energy.

This is very much the theistic panpsychist theory, along the lines of Whitehead’s process theology, in which God is a “process of becoming”. If I believed in God, I would regard this as far more convincing than David’s God, who seems to know and plan everything in advance. However, slowly self-organizing energy could also describe the slow dawn of consciousness within impersonal matter.

TONY: I just don't extend it to other structures because I think the time scales for that to happen would be prohibitive, and because it is far easier to imagine it happening once
than it is to imagine it happening billions of times with harmonious results.

We have no precedent by which to judge time scales, especially if the original mechanism for life, reproduction and evolutionary change is intelligent. Once you have that mechanism, self-organization will happen billions of times.

DAVID: God is a much more logical option than the alchemy of inorganic sources from an 'impersonal universe'. As for your dislike of my second statement what made the impersonal universe but a first cause?

dhw: The choice is between a conscious first cause (your God) and a non-conscious first cause (an impersonal universe). Neither was “made”. You understandably claim that our life and consciousness and all our powers are too complex to have arisen without a designer. And yet you claim that it is logical for life and consciousness, in the form of a living, conscious God (who remains hidden) with powers infinitely greater than our own, to exist without having been designed. Wonderland logic.

DAVID: Of course the logic here is 'wonderland'. Logic requires God is eternal

Or logic requires that an impersonal universe is eternal.

DAVID: I still view God as eternal and I think He has produced many universes over eternity and we folks just happen to be in this one.

Or there have been many impersonal universes over eternity etc.