Athetotheist wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:46 am
Again, we've never had Nothing to experiment on [thanks to the ever-present zero-point energy field] so we certainly don't have any way of establishing what Nothing can
supposedly do.
Who am I, but I think you've done well this far in your argumentations, but...
And since we have no way of knowing what conditions exist outside the known universe, it's pointless to make any hard claims about them. We can, however, speculate...
Speculation is fine and all, but in this matter you're fixing to speculate on something that's outside the known universe, namely a consciousness (god), that'd have something to do with creating the universe (if ya don't explicitly say it as such). While you're obviously correct in the we can't know about outside the universe, you're ostensibly trying to say we can.
...that consciousness might exist on a macro scale beyond our ability to observe (can an individual neuron contemplate the brain of which it's a part?),...
"Might". Only through such "might" will this "macro scale consciousness" be shown to exist.
...which I find more plausible than nothing being able to produce something.
Plausibility is a poor means of finding truth or fact.
I may seem to have a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat,...
I don't think it's a hat from which this rabbit's getting pulled.
but I'd say that makes more sense than trying to get the same rabbit out of the same hat starting out with no magician, no rabbit and no hat.
What "makes sense" ain't always what makes truth.
It's been referred to as the "cosmic bootstrap principle", likening it to someone pulling themselves up by their own boot straps, and naming it after a principle which doesn't work says a lot.
I refer to this "macro consciousness" angle as bovinely utile lofty language short having intelligent thought.
The problem with this "macro consciousness" angle is the same as for the alledged creation of the universe, it introduces 'facts' (my term) that ain't in evidence.
You're allowing for this consciousness to have either always existed, or to have came into existence prior to, so outside the universe, so by your own reckoning above, we can't know us nothing about it. Beyond speculation, which is no better'n the speculations of your opponents.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
-Punkinhead Martin