by Factfulness 169 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
So our universe and it's laws cannot exist without a first causer causing it to be...
Yet this first causer had no problem popping into existence without an initial first causer causing this secondary first causer to pop into existence...
I think the problem here is that some people are assuming our universe had a beginning in the same sense that some people are defining it here i.e. before there was nothing and then everything came into being...
Have you read Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel yet? I am reading it again. What a fantastic book, surely ahead of its time.
No but I read Non Local Universe about 15 years ago and was trying to understand the Bell Theorem. I should read about some more to comment though because a lot went over my head as far as the implications of some experiments. I'm a little more stable these days so I hope to review them in the future.
There are many scientists who are suggesting that increased complexity, life and even consciousness are inevitable. Physicist Jeremy England is one good example.
The thing they all have in common is a desire to explain complexity in terms of simplicity. Nagel goes too far by positing some mystical teleology. In other words it may well be that the path of evolution has a general direction of travel but it does NOT have a predetermined destination. That is theology dressed up as science. It is worthy of that charlatan Deepak Chopra.
Yet this first causer had no problem popping into existence without an initial first causer causing this secondary first causer to pop into existence...
SBF gets around this blatant contradiction by simply defining god as needing no beginning. Voila!
It is pure sophistry.
Have you read the book?
Consciousness may be inevitable given the universe as it exists. The remarkable thing, or the mysterious thing, is that the universe exists in such as way that makes it inevitable in the first place. It’s like marvelling at the shape ginger bread come out of the mould. Someone might say: that’s not remarkable at all, of course ginger bread men come out ginger bread men-shaped, because the mould is that shape. But that’s the question. Why is the mould that shape. Why is the universe such that it produces consciousness?
the universe exists in such as way that makes it inevitable in the first place
How so?
Why assume this is the first, or only, universe to have existed?
This 'god must have started it' argument relies on too many 'just so' assumptions to even get it going; and that's ignoring the 'turtles all the way down' or special pleading required once those assumptions are up and running.
Consciousness may be inevitable given the universe as it exists. The remarkable thing, or the mysterious thing, is that the universe exists in such as way that makes it inevitable in the first place.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? Same thing relatively. Consciousness is said to be the ground being. I think to 2 slit experiment and wave collapse function when making an observation, and other such experiments that prove this point to consciousness being everything. Without conscious observation everything is just waves of probability.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?
Yes of course it does.
Consciousness is said to be the ground being.
What does that even mean?
I think to 2 slit experiment and wave collapse function when making an observation, and other such experiments that prove this point to consciousness being everything.
There is no such connection You have just gone full Deepak. Never go full Deepak.
You forgot to throw in the 'q' word.
How so?
Well, when we listen to Darwinian accounts of how humans got to stand up and be intelligent, they tend to focus on the proximal causes, like the need to adapt to this or that particular situation, plus sexual selection and so on. But it doesn’t tend to address the mind boggling number of junctures that even allow us to arrive at these crossroads in the first place, involving the precise laws of the universe, the way natural selection itself works, the very idea of selective pressures. Reality seems to be amazingly designed to result in a brain that can perceive the world around it.
How do we account for this? Some have proposed the idea that there is an infinite number of universes, and we inhabit the one where we can perceive the universe simply because we can’t exist in any of the other universes where such perception is not possible. This is an interesting idea, and not easy to rule out, but isn’t it unnecessarily complicated. Isn’t the simplest explanation for the universe appearing to be geared toward consciousness the idea that it was constructed in that way on purpose? The multiverse idea at least acknowledges that our consciousness is remarkable and requires some sort of remarkable explanation.
Simon Conway Morris is a scientist who writes on the inevitability of human type consciousness in our universe.
