Afterlife: Pinker's skeptical thought (Endings)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 09, 2020, 19:53 (1416 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Our only difference then is the source of intelligent activity by cells. I have God as the source, and you don't know of a source, but God is possible.

dhw: Unfortunately, our fundamental difference is the NATURE of intelligent activity. You insist that each activity has been programmed or dabbled by your God, and the cells are automatons obeying his instructions, whereas I propose that cellular intelligence is autonomous.

But you have no explanation for the origin of cellular intelligence.

xxxxx

DAVID: I can't accept the complexity of the biology of life I fully understand without a designer.

dhw: And the atheist can’t accept the existence of an unknown, unknowable, hidden, inexplicable, sourceless, eternal, immaterial form of universal consciousness. You both refuse to take off your blinkers, but one of you is right. To each his own.

DAVID: But you agree design implies a designer, don't you?

dhw: Or designers. For instance, if all the increasing complexities of life were the product of intelligent cells cooperating, we would have millions of designers. The question then would be: how did the intelligent cell originate? And that question is on a par with: how did your God originate? And so back we go to “first cause”, as already discussed.

DAVID: It is easy to see intelligence in the purposeful activity of cells, since they are designed that way by their designer, who also is first cause.

dhw: Yes, their purposeful, autonomous intelligence could have been designed by a designer. And an atheist can say that their purposeful, autonomous intelligence, like life itself***, was the result of a lucky combination of mindless energy and matter, which is also first cause.

And I go back to in basic form of plasma the charged ions combine in no particular direction unless under a specific force, which appeared because of what?

dhw: ***Under "theoretical origin of life": "There are two explanations for the origins of life's building molecules: extraterrestrial delivery, such as via meteorites, and endogenous formation. The presence of amino acids and other biomolecules in meteorites points to the former.”
See what I mean?

We know that some amino acids arrived by meteorites. That is old news. Tells us nothing about how the necessary 20 amino acids, all left-handed appeared and were combined by some process to make active living biochemistry.