General discussion
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Topic
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Possibility
LockedWhy Can’t you see it? Drop the ad hominem BS for just a moment, and ask yourself “Why am I a Doubter”. Conversely, “Why am I so Sure”?
The question posed for more than two millennium is not whether their is a creator, but whether you can see him (it/her). Naturalists wish to believe that EVERYTHING can be seen, and that which cannot be seen does not exist. To assume that everything can be seen is the apex of narcissism, yet this is the motor that drives science and naturalism. Science is beneficial. Naturalism is faith. It is necessary to define what the character of “natural” is, to exclude which is most difficult to see, or that which seems least likely, in order to be a “naturalist”. That which is extremely improbable or empirically invisible must not exist. But, that is essentially the description of our known cosmos.
When brilliant mathematicians like Roger Penrose calculate the odds of our observable universe being so coincidentally appropriate to life as ten to the tenth to the negative one hundred fiftieth, a number close to the number of all particles in the known universe taken to the power of all the known particles in the universe, the word “coincidence” loses all meaning. Penrose was not yet considering biochemical complexities, only the coincidences of physics deployed in the big bang. Is this extremely unlikely? Is it more unlikely than “unnatural” or “supernatural”?
The key argument for atheism has lately become evolution. One learned discourse I recently encountered in Uncommon Dissent was the “logical” claim that the universe not only created itself but also programmed itself to be perfect for life. This is an attempt to find a middle ground between teleology and naturalism. It walks around questions about primacy and information theory, not to mention probability and statistics. Which was, amazingly, the focus of the argument, that being that the cosmos is full of nonphysical realities like law, justice, truth, mathematics (philosophers wonder how everything seems so amenable to description by such a precise mechanism as ordered numbers), and a number of other abstract realities that don’t easily fall to scientific scrutiny, i. e., things that are real, but not scientific. Evolution has chosen to embrace such things and declare them the result of natural selection. The question of origins (biologically, at least) has been determined by Darwinism, so everything else logically must be the result of the same unimaginable cosmic coincidence.
Darwinists view poor design, like Dodo birds or elephants, as evidence there was no designer. Yet, if evolution is driven by natural selection, the survival of the fittest, why did poor designs survive? Either they are not poor designs, or the concept of the quality of the design as driving force is suspect. The same reasoning applies to “vestigial” organs, assumed to be leftovers, but which may actually be useful. If they are leftovers, why wasn’t the design deleted long ago? Excess genetic baggage and excess tissue differentiation cannot be viewed as “naturalistically selected”. If they are not the result of natural selection, the assumption that “if there was a designer, then the designer is stupid” is even more stupid, as we cannot know the goals of the designer, and design of such complexity is truly beyond our wildest imagining.
Even if we, as humans, can eventually engineer a living organism, it is only because we are emulating existing design paradigms within a cosmos already fortuitously amenable to the physics of life, environmentally, chemically, and astronomically.
To look at a house and not know who it’s designer was is not only feasible, it is likely. I look at houses every day without any hint of who designed or built them. But, to look at a house and lack the mental capacity to realize that it WAS designed, that it was built, is inconceivable, regardless of intelligence. A monkey may see it as no more remarkable than a cave or a tree, but I don’t know any way any human capable of speech could fail to recognize design. And, the most complex structure ever made by man is less than a sandcastle compared to the convenient and interactive universe we live in. We are living inside a miracle. WE are a miracle.
The question is not properly “What is SCIENTIFIC”? The proper question is “What is REAL”?
MUST all of reality bend to the scientific method? If not, then is it not possible that not all of reality is comprehensible, since not all of what is “real” may be directly observable and quantifiable? Is it not POSSIBLE that some portion of REALITY may only be concluded by implication? Is it possible that there is SOMETHING outside our cosmos, something NOT constrained by time or the logic of primacy and causality? Is it POSSIBLE?
