Phil Forum : Intelligent Design Evolution

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... riously/p5

We are an illusion where anything is possible, but the laws of physics rule most of the time. God is thus ALMOST onmi-all but not quite. — CliveG

For an eternal entity, it's true that anything is possible, but only that which is temporal and physical is actual. So, for our actualized world, G*D is "dreaming" of a system with fixed laws. Any different rules would produce different worlds. From our perspective, in the world that we "imagine" to be Real, G*D is also an imaginary entity --- we don't know G*D directly, but only by inference --- that we use to explain why the world exists and persists as it does.

The afterlife is where souls go before reincarnating. — CliveG


I have no personal experience of Afterlife or Reincarnation. So I can't judge the veracity of your assertions. ---Gnomon

but have had many supernatural experiences. — CliveG

I have had no "supernatural experiences" at all. And most of what people call "supernatural" is merely a misinterpretation of mundane experiences that don't fit their expectations. The only thing I refer to as "supernatural" is G*D. And that's because a Creator is logically superior and external to the Creation.

We differ in that God appreciates worship as a form of respect — CliveG

My G*D has no physical human characteristics, such as emotions or egotism, because they are produced by the physical body. Human rulers, like Donald Trump, have inflated self-importance, that needs to be pumped-up on a regular basis. Many religious people assume that God requires regular reinforcement of praise & worship from his subjects.

Reality is often not what it may seem. — CliveG

I agree. But my experienced and imaginary reality is different from yours. It's boringly normal and natural.


I have retained skepticism of everything. — CliveG

It's easy to be skeptical of other people's beliefs, but hard to be critical of your own.


Grandiosity : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiosity

[Gnomon]

Grandiose. I presume it is a reference for me to consider. — CliveG

The link to "Grandiosity" was a reference to Caesar-wannabe Presidents and Anthropomorphic Gods who require regular ego-pumps to keep their self-image inflated. It was not a reference to you.

[Gnomon]

In my experience, God is part of the dream of the Ultimate Intelligence. — CliveG

Our experiences of "reality" are quite different. My world is boringly normal & natural compared to yours. I can only explain your dream-like worldview as due to deeper perception, or more theatrical imagination. Anyway, my abstract G*D model is also boring, although super-natural.

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... riously/p5

A being is a temporal existence, whereas a timelessness, formless existence would need to be inclusive of all possible instances of being, ever. — Possibility

Yes. That's why I refer to the presumed Creator of space-time as BEING. Not a creature, but the unlimited potential for creation of creatures. BEING is not a person or thing, but a Principle : "a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning". G*D is not a proven or provable fact, but an Axiom : "an unproven statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true". These principles are beyond the ability of humans to explain, so they must be taken for granted like the axioms of geometry. Fazed by such fundamental abstractions, Nobel physicist, Eugene Wigner, wrote an article on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.

Both Science and Religion have their principles. Hinduism has postulated up to 24 cosmic principles. And Science has a variety of principles that Galileo called "Laws of Nature", assuming that the God of the Bible was the Law-giver. I don't accept the out-dated biblical descriptions of God, but I have no better solution to the problem of Being, of Existence, than to assume that some eternal Principle, including "all possible instances of being", caused the space-time world to be. Beyond that Axiom, I know nothing about BEING.

In fact, I would argue that knowledge/information = creation. — Possibility

In my Enformationism thesis, I refer to the creative Principle or Law or Potential or Energy that motivates & controls the Evolution of the world as Enformy and EnFormAction. But my thesis assumes that G*D didn't know the outcome of this experiment in possibility. Instead, S/he programmed the System with parameters to guide it toward a hitherto unknown destination. This is what I call Intelligent Evolution : a Creative Process, not a one & done Creation.

Enformy, EnFormAction : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... riously/p5

I thought you may want some "proof" in the way of personal evidence from some-one who is grounded but has had infrequent but remarkable experiences — CliveG

Unfortunately, another man's subjective experiences are not proofs, but assertions to be taken on faith. Yet it's undeniable that people who strongly believe in some ideology can have remarkable effects on other people. For example, Marx & Lenin preached about the coming Utopia of Communism, thereby motivating millions of people to sacrifice their lives for a political dream. But, since there are many incompatible ideologies out there, I must "work out by logic what is probable". Similarly, I am skeptical of the Make America Great Again propaganda, because it contradicts my experience, and learning, of how nations rise & fall. Of course, I could be wrong. Remarkable things do happen.

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... riously/p5

Do you believe in souls, spirits, ghosts, seeing the future, mental telepathy, reincarnation, miracles (big and small), and the like? Do you given any credence to the teachings of various prophets and religions? Do you have a summary somewhere I could read? — CliveG

No. Actually, I do believe that many people sincerely believe in such things, because they have experiences that they interpret as supernatural or paranormal. But, since my brain is rather boringly pragmatic rather than idealistic, I seldom experience any of the wonderful miracles reported by other people. I see fictional Ghost Whisperers on TV with "passed-on" loved ones standing right there in living color. But ghosts in the real world are invisible, and must be "seen" via extrasensory perception, or detected by electromagnetic technology, which can be interpreted only by experts. Generally, most people don't actually experience paranormal phenomena, but get their information second-hand from "experts" or "adepts".

Even when I was very young, in a fundamentalist religion, I suspected that the Bible was not the word of God. I won't go into that long story here. But it took me until the age of thirty to finally come-out as an unbeliever. Everyone I knew was a believer in some kind of god. So I had to choose either tribal truth or my personal truth : faith or reason. My extra-biblical studies confirmed that biblical prophecies were "fulfilled" only by typical fact-fudging.

However, after years of private study of Science & World Religions & Philosophies, I eventually came to believe that the most reasonable explanation for the existence of the real world is creation by a First Cause of some kind. Unfortunately, just as I have no experience of ghosts, I also have no personal experience of G*D, or gnostic knowledge of the divine. So my "belief" is not a matter of passionate Faith, but merely an acquiescence to dispassionate Logic. I just take the G*D theory as more likely than the Serendipity (random chance) explanation for my existence. I don't expect my logical G*D to "save" me, or to grant three wishes, or to amaze me with miracles. So I approach the world Stoically, like a recovering alcoholic (recovering from addictive Faith) : "G*D grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

If you are really interested in how someone can believe in G*D without Faith or Revelation, my Enformationism website might help to explain. However, it's not a dramatic human interest story, but a boring philosophical thesis : no spooky Souls haunting moody neurotics, just mundane Selves trying to make sense of a wondrous world in ordinary ways.


Enformationism Thesis : http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/385373

There's also no specific reason presented to think it was created. But if created, created by what? — CeleRate

There is a specific reason to think the universe was created. Before the Big Bang theory, scientists could just assume that the physical world was eternal. In fact Fred Hoyle, who coined the derisive term "Big Bang", argued in favor of a steady state of creation as opposed to the singular "act of creation" implied by the expanding universe evidence. But the evidence in favor of BB convinced astronomers that our world was created in an instant, just a few billion years ago. So, now the origin of the universe is an open question. But the reason for accepting the notion of a seemingly magical creative act is that the preponderance of scientific evidence supports it.

As for "created by what?", here's a link to a blog post on the topic "Coincidence or Creation?" And the "Click Here" link goes to a continuation of that topic on the blog forum. The "what" may not be what you expect.

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/385373

I haven't seen any claims by astronomers, but what do cosmologists say? — CeleRate

Google search on "cosmologist big bang instant" to see where scientists use the term "instant" in reference to the sudden beginning of the universe.

How does this qualify as a specific reason? — CeleRate

The embarassing question of how & why the universe originated from an unknown and unknowable pre-existence is definitely a motivating "reason" for cosmologists & philosophers to entertain the possibility of Specific Creation, and to reject it categorically. One sign of such reasoning is the negative response to the BB theory, which to most people looked like a creation event. Some Atheists immediately began trying to find a plausible "reason" to justify their original assumption that the universe is eternal, thus un-created. They simply modified that assumption to re-define our "universe" as a merely a local instance of a Pluriverse --- which came to be known as the "Multiverse". They have a "reason" for preferring a self-existent material world : it avoids the necessity for a self-existent immaterial Creator. But some "hard science" Cosmologists (Paul Davies) chose to face the "facts", and accept their implications.

What evidence? — CeleRate

Please don't play ignorant. In the Information Age, the evidence is easily available for those who are looking for it. But one man's evidence is another man's nonsense. It all depends on your perspective, your worldview, your belief system, and your ability to adapt your beliefs to new facts.


PS__The "Creator" I refer to is an abstraction based on logical inference, not a concrete entity known directly by revelation. It's the "god of the philosophers".

[Gnomon]

It still could be a creation event. I'm just not sure what theists think this grants them if it is. — CeleRate

For some Theists, scientific evidence is irrelevant. But for Intelligent Design advocates, the discovery that the expanding universe can be traced back to the beginning of space-time validates their belief in Special Creation. They also make much of the implication that all the finely-tuned initial conditions and the governing Laws of Nature were pre-set at the beginning to produce a "flat" curve of expansion. Which may be one reason why Alan Guth developed a mathematical theory of Cosmic Inflation to explain how matter & energy got evenly distributed, so that life & mind could emerge and replicate. But that even more radically instantaneous pre-bang event (fractions of a second) just added more evidence that it was a miracle. From nothing, a new world appeared : Presto! Voila! So the Big Bang theory "grants them" physical evidence of a super-natural creation event, that doesn't depend on Biblical support, but can be interpreted as a 21st century technical description of an ancient mythical explanation for how & why the world exists.

This is a false dichotomy. It's not as if it has been established that the only two options are a non-contingent (world or universe?), or a contingent one that depends on an immaterial creator. — CeleRate

What other options do you see to explain the BB besides : A> Random Accident by Coincidence (quantum fluctuation) in a self-existent Multiverse, or B> Intentional Instantaneous Creation of Nature by a self-existent SuperNatural Creator? In "A" the Universe is contingent upon a self-existent eternal process (e.g. Multiverse). In "B" it's contingent upon a self-existent eternal immaterial BEING. Both assume that the Potential for Life & Mind was inherent in the pre-BB existence. "A" assumes the existence of something like Democritus' eternal imperishable Atoms as the physical substance of reality. "B" assumes the existence of eternal immortal Memes (Ideas) as the metaphysical substance*1 of our world.

*1 Aristotle's Substance : A> Temporal Perishable Things (contingent accidents); B> Eternal Universals, Forms, Archetypes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory
"The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek ousia, which means ‘being’"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/
"Aristotle divides the world into two categories: substances and accidents- substances are the most fundamental." https://simplyphilosophy.org/study/aris ... ce-theory/

I'm all for learning new arguments if there's one to present. — CeleRate

Check out my non-theistic thesis of Enformationism. It requires a Deistic G*D to get the ball rolling, but then the process of Intelligent Evolution keeps it moving in the right direction. The theory may or may not be "true", but it makes allowances for Life, Mind, & Qualia that are unexplained by the conventional theories of modern Science.

Enformationism : http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
Intelligent Evolution : http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Essay ... 120106.pdf

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... riously/p6

How has it been established that the cause is supernatural? — CeleRate

By simple Logic. If the First Cause is prior-to and has the power to create a process of Natural Causation, it is by definition superior to Nature, hence "supernatural". But that definition also applies to the hypothetical Multiverse : if it exists, it is supernatural -- above and beyond Nature.

But, if you mean by "established" that a particular First Cause hypothesis is unanimously accepted by scientific experts, then that is another question altogether. And I assume you know the answer. The current most popular alternative to the God-theory is the Multiverse hypothesis, in various permutations. But no consensus.

theists still have to establish that the primer mover is a personal God — CeleRate

Theists "establish" the personal characteristics of their invisible God, by Faith in the revelation of their sect's scriptures. But, since I have no faith in their scriptures, I have no knowledge at all of my so-called G*D except logical necessity. An effect must have a cause, and a beginning must have a Starter, hence the BB must have had a First Cause : either Dumb Luck or Intelligent Creation.

I'm questioning how it is justified that there are just two options — CeleRate

As I asked before, what other logical options are you aware of? If you are not scientifically serious, you can make a sci-fi list of a> god-like aliens from outer space, or b> ancient high-tech civilizations like Atlantis, or c> a pantheon of super-human gods like the Greeks and Hebrews. Wikipedia has a list of creation myths from around the world. if you want to believe in one of them, you are free to do so. But if you prefer a philosophically cogent answer to the First Cause question, you will have to choose from two opposite solutions : Accident or Intention.

Creation Myths : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths