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Replying to post 52 by DrNoGods]
Is there any need in not invoking a designer?
If for no other reason than that it is superfluous.
Superfluous to what? Existence within this universe? What point is there to think the universe has a designer? Stuff like that?
There is no evidence for the existence of such a designer
What evidence would you expect should exist which would signify there is a designer involved with existence?
After all - there is no practical point in claiming 'there is no evidence' if you cannot
explain what you think would constitute evidence for such, now is there? That is 'superfluous expression' right there!
so why invoke it when it isn't required to explain nature?
I say GOD is ultimately consciousness. I say that locally speaking, the Earth is the form of a conscious self aware creative intelligent being who uses its intelligence and creative expression to bring forms into existence through the stuff of the planet and the process known as 'biological evolution', and divests aspects of it own consciousness into those forms to give them life.
According to my understanding, it is apparent that for nature to be explained it requires consciousness and intelligence, and a type of form which can be used to explain and understand explanations through.
A creator entity involved in the process is not at all superfluous and may even be necessary if the process is to be a success (the human species becoming a Type One Species) - as in -
A System of Parity
It may be a convenience to attribute things we do not yet understand as humans (eg. origin of life these days, most everything in nature 2000 years ago), but god of the gaps is seeing fewer and fewer gaps as time goes by.
The design might be for this purpose too.
I don't have a problem with the idea that we are within a type of simulation and while I appreciate the idea that science and technology can potentially be used to get human beings the foothold necessary to continue existing within the universe (simulation or otherwise) even if that was to be the eventuality, it still won't itself fill the gap. Even if, through science and technology, death disease old age etc becomes a thing of the past - therefore afterlife (as an alternate reality) will not be something necessary to contemplate as a possibility, and the idea of a creator of the reality being experienced will be something to put aside to perhaps be answered in [strike]a few billion years[/strike] however long it takes for human beings to have sufficiently learned enough to have similar powers to create alternate realities and by that can at least grasp the possibility that they are creations within a creation, themselves.
Perhaps even then the notion - true or not - would still be regarded as superfluous to many. But it cannot every simply become redundant or truly superfluous. Even then, as now, the possibility remains. It might not matter to most, but that is not to say that it doesn't actually matter.
True, but it doesn't mean a designer was involved either ... it just identifies a selection process that isn't artificial.
'Isn't artificial' in the sense that there is nothing outside of itself to compare it with, so it is considered not only real, but the only thing that is real.
Occam's razor would suggest not invoking a designer when none is required for the explanation ... again, it is superfluous.
Occam's Razor (by its own decree) can not think outside of its own box.
I would argue that as long as death is a certainty, alternate realities and universe designers are still very much on the table as possibly/probable explanations for existing on this planet in this universe.
Occam's Razor might become more relevant once science and technology do away with death...as well as doing away with human experience of alternate realities not involving death.
Occam's Razor is a subjective device. A discriminatory device.
Cut away all you like, the question remains.
"random process of mindlessness" is not a good combination of words. This ignores natural selection and implies the types of analogies used earlier in this thread where a bunch of watch parts could eventually assemble themselves into a working watch if shaken in a box for long enough (or tornados in junkyards creating 747s, monkeys writing Shakespeare, etc.). In that case there is no "selection" going on that would lead to any particular structure (watch or otherwise), and no mutations occurring randomly that might create an advantageous change in one of the watch parts that might allow it to better fit with the correct mating part, so that shaking would eventually bring them together properly. It is a completely wrong analogy of how evolution works.
Tell that to whomever brought it into this discussion. Maybe they will listen if it comes from an atheist.
What evidence does show is that evolution by natural selection is an adequate explanation for how life diversified on this planet once it had initially begun (and evolution does not, and never will, explain the origin of life as it makes no assumptions on that subject ... it only requires that it happened in some way without regard to how).
Yet here you are making the assumption anyway.
All that you are really saying here is that existence of itself is evident. We are here. How we got here is unknown and evolution cannot and never will be able to explain the origin of existence, and is not a great device to use to argue against the idea that the universe was created by intelligent beings.
Regard to how is not important. It is not how or why. It is that it is.
No intelligence is required to direct the mutational changes and the selection of those that are beneficial and elimination of those that are not.
But that is not the actual case. Plainly intelligence IS required or it wouldn't be happening intelligently and purposefully. Intelligence is within the very process you are claiming doesn't require intelligence.
It is superfluous to claim 'intelligence is not required' and Occam's Razor would cut that part out.
What we are left with then, is a process which requires intelligence because it is intelligent.
Or - it is intelligent because it requires intelligence.
Or more plainly still. It is an intelligent process.
You can claim that some intelligence is required "just because", but the actual scientific evidence does not support that view and does support the contrary.
But everything science does say about the process is
specifically showing intelligence involved in said process! So it gets back to interpretation. Some see the whole process as a mindless one, while others see a great mind at work.
