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Replying to post 152 by DrNoGods]
Yes, but see, I do not believe Darwinian (now called neo-Darwinian) evolution gives a complete account of evolution. Neo-Darwinians focus on competition, but yet there is also considerable cooperation taking place in the evolutionary process. I also see a definite direction to the evolutionary process, whereas many neo-Darwinians do not. I see the trend is a continual development from the less complex to the more complex, from the less sensitive to the more sensitive. So there is something going on other than the struggle for survival. The more complex and sensitive are the more vulnerable. If we had a nuclear holocaust, it would be curtains for us, but cockroaches and other far simpler creatures would have a field day on what's left. I also view evolution as the rise of the novel and improbable. New creative possibilities are continually being introduced and actualized. And that means a transcendental imagination has entered the picture, i.e., God.
I think it is a mistake to assume God is introduced simply because we are ignorant and don't know how something works. We do in fact know how things work. And we know that all complex order requires a designing mind. We also know that anything that has a beginning has a creator. The universe had a beginning; therefore, there must be God, the creator. If there is no God, no creator, then existence is totally absurd. But I do not accept that.
Much as I respect science, I think its starting-point is misplaced. It starts way out there, whereas I think knowledge starts back here, with ourselves. I think all knowing is analogous knowing. To know, we must generalize from the familiar to the unfamiliar. What we know best is our human existence, So that should be our fundamental starting-point. We should generalize from there. So unless there is some analogy, some real likeness between ourselves and the rest of reality, we haven't got an inkling what's going on. Projection and anthropomorphizing aren't the problem, they are the solution. Consequently, I view the basic building blocks of reality, the atoms, so to speak, as momentary unities of subjective experience. I have no place for passive, inert, dead matter. Everything is alive. All things, in all their aspects, consist exclusively of minds. The universe is not a machine. It is a complex organism. And complex organisms all have a dominant member, a brain. So think of God as the brain of the universe.
I don't think the question of God is a scientific question. I don't think astronomy, or biology or chemistry or any science will solve it. I think the question of God is more like a question in math or logic. To start with, science is not equipped to determine whether there is or is not a God. It's the job of science to tell us what kind of universe we have got. If science finds the universe is different than what we thought, that simply means God created in a different way than we thought, and that's it. Science is neutral on the question of God.
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." -- Albert Einstein -- Written in 1954 to Jewish philosopher Erik Gutkind.
