Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 11:57 (1163 days ago) @ David Turell

MAX PLANCK

dhw: I hesitate to cross swords with such an eminent scientist who can't answer back, but hold on. “Matter as such does not exist”, but matter exists? Everything we know of has to originate, but how does that come to mean it doesn’t exist “as such”?

DAVID: The atom is pure energy particles is his meaning.

That does not mean that matter doesn’t exist/is not real.

dhw: I’m going to risk philosophical life and limb here, but I truly believe that matter is real. I don’t know how it originated, but maybe…just maybe…it has always been there. Hold on for the next mystery…

DAVID: But, remember E=mc2. At the plasma stage our universe was pure energy in a plasma state.

That does not mean that matter is not real, or that the process of energy producing matter has not gone on for eternity.

dhw: Why didn’t he just say there had to be a first cause, and he believed it was a spiritual being named God, instead of all this tangled sophistry?

DAVID: I can't speak for him, but a first cause MUST exist eternally.

I have just said that I wish he had said so, instead of all the sophistry.

Spiders lasso

DAVID: Evolution is still a steady process from simple to complex, and the more complex reek of design, which you actively recognize and keeps you solidly agnostic. You are still all questioning with no answers. I'm happy with my answers and positions.

dhw: You have missed out at least half of our discussion! ....God getting new ideas as he goes along, a free-for-all governed by possibly God-given cellular intelligence). You have accepted that they are all logical, and we have now finally managed to jettison your “humanization” objection, since you agree that human characteristics are possible.

DAVID: What are you smoking? God is never human. Look at the bold; totally humanizing as your version of God bumbles along changing His mind. Your version of God's actions and thoughts are logical only if He is very human in His thought processes and reasons. I've not changed.

I have not said that God is human, and I have not said he is bumbling along or changing his mind. You have agreed it is possible (originally, it was probable) that your God has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours. (That does not mean he has two arms, two legs and a beard.) Getting new ideas is part of the process of creativity. This is not bumbling or mind-changing. And why shouldn’t your God experiment, and why shouldn’t he learn from each new step he takes, and since he is supposed to be a unique being, why should he not create things in order to have something outside himself that he can be interested in?

Fin to limb genes

DAVID: Easier to take first hand control then drawing up second hand instructions.

dhw: What on earth do you mean by “second hand instructions”? Why is it easier to draw up millions of individual programmes and to perform millions of operations and give millions of lessons than to create a single mechanism which will enable all life forms to do their own designing?

DAVID: As a designer I have done exactly that. Simple direct design is quick and easy.

There are lots of things that are quick and easy. I am asking why it would be easier for your God to directly design millions and millions of programmes, and directly perform millions and millions of operations, than to sit back and watch the different life forms design their own programmes and perform their own operations.

EGNOR ON FREE WILL

QUOTE: Sensitive states are sensation, perception, imagination, memory, and sensitive appetites (emotions), among others. These are tightly linked to matter and may be considered material powers. Human beings also have rational mental states, which are the powers of the intellect and the will. These abstract powers are immaterial — they are not caused by matter — and thus the will is not determined by the brain.

dhw: As usual, Egnor only tells half the story. His approach is all about dualism versus materialism.

DAVID: Study this argument from ID. It can not be condensed with visuals required:
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/why-the-idea-that-the-human-mind-is-an-illusion-doesnt-w...

Please don’t do this. The article has nothing whatsoever to do with Egnor’s misuse of dualism v materialism to “prove” that we have free will. You have completely ignored my response to Egnor's half-baked argument (I shan't reproduce my response here). Please stick to the subject.

Highest speed claw snapping

dhw: Of course we have no idea how it developed – or even why. What I would like to know is why your God would specially design all this claw-snapping if his only purpose was to design H. sapiens. Do you think high-speed claw snapping is an essential part of our food supply?

DAVID: Part of all ecosystems in its own system.

Yes, every life form that ever lived is/was part of its ecosystem. No connection whatsoever to the theory that every life form is/was “part of the goal of evolving humans”.