Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Monday, September 27, 2021, 15:45 (943 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have just been discussing the implications of your belief that your God designed every phase of evolution! You have told us that “species must survive until God is ready to produce the next new form from them”. And so the process goes from species to species, with each one being prepared in advance for survival. And so I ask: how can preparations for survival come to mean that survival is not the purpose of preparations for survival?

DAVID: Of course it is, for reasons I stated above.

dhw: So if the purpose of preparations for survival is survival, are you saying that the changes made for the purpose of survival are NOT the changes that lead to speciation?

The survival adaptations made epigenetically do not cause speciation. Survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species.

Reductionism
DAVID: Reductionism will not explain life:
https://bigthink.com/13-8/mystery-of-life/

dhw: A lovely article, which I think will find echoes in many minds, whether theistic, atheistic or agnostic.

DAVID: the writer is struggling with the concept of our consciousness without saying the word. But his key point is reductionism cannot give us an explanation of it. I would like to note my presentation of reductionist science discoveries won't get that explanation. What they do show is the need for a brilliant designer behind the underpinnings of life itself that produce consciousness. Briefly, consciousness cannot exist without being designed.

dhw: It’s very refreshing to read an article which refrains from pushing a particular agenda. Your final remark, of course, puts a bullet into the atheist’s gun: If consciousness cannot exist without being designed, who designed the consciousness which you believe designed our consciousness? The usual pathetic answer is “first cause”, which explains absolutely nothing, since ‘first cause’ could just as well be non-conscious matter chancing to form the first rudiments of consciousness, which then evolves. Just as difficult to believe as a supreme consciousness without a cause!

DAVID: Yes, your agnosticism recognizes design without a designer. Sorry you can't find as way to bridge the gap in your thinking.

dhw: After all these years, you still haven’t understood the meaning of agnosticism. I do not “recognize” design without a designer. The gap is exactly the same as your own in relation to consciousness: you say consciousness cannot exist without being designed, but at the same time you believe in consciousness that has not been designed (your God’s). Likewise, you believe that design must be the product of a designer, but the designer was not designed. I find that just as difficult to believe as the theory that life and consciousness evolved from unconscious non-life and that design evolved from non-design. What I "recognize" is that I cannot choose between the two equally mysterious options, even though one must be nearer the truth than the other.

What does 'nearer to the truth mean' to you? For me it is a cut and dried choice, a designer must exist to produce the designs we see, or chance did it. And I view chance as beyond illogical.