The fact of being necessary and not contingent. It is ab-surd to believe that **everything **exists without a surd, i.e. without a fundamental Reality.Finally!!
(I can address the other stuff you said later but this is what I wanted to know)
You’re right, there would be an infinite regress of intelligent creators. But why do you (and Flew) stop at one particular creator. If human intelligence must have a creator, (and for the sake of this argument let’s say that it does) what is it about this creative intelligence that makes it able to exist forever?
The principle of parsimony. Why multiply entities unnecessarily?And how do we know that this creative intelligence was the one that uncreated and not one before it or the one before that one?
What does infinity mean? Is that incomprehensible?Also, what does it mean to exist forever? Isn’t that just as strange to speak of as infinite regress?
But to say that there is a purpose in a natural activity does “add” something to our understanding. For example, Harvey had an important insight when he recognized that the heart was a pump for a circular system of blood.To say that an intelligent agent created life does not add anything to our understanding of how life came about. It only adds more questions like: What is this agent? How does it interact with nonliving matter to create life? Where did the agent come from?
Calling it Irreducible complexity is fine but also misleading. Its important that you do not confuse the argument i made with Behe’s blackbox argument. I am not making a scientific argument like Behe. Behe points to a particular object of scientific knowledge and claims that it is demonstrably irreducibly complex within the physical context of the scientific method. This is not what i have said. I am not pointing to a particular object of scientific knowledge but rather i am basing my argument on a metaphysical principle, such as sufficient causality, given the general knowledge of integrated complexity. I am making a metaphysical argument. Here is a snippet of what i said…Thank you for elaborating.
This type of argument falls into the same category as the irreducible complexity argument you were telling MindOverMatter2 not to use.
…First of all i make it clear that integrated complexity exists. But i don’t say that something in particular is irreducibly complex. I am claiming that while science can in principle explain integrated complexity with other integrated complex objects, it cannot in principle sufficiently reduce integrated complexity to that which is not a mechanism or machine. Which means that the only possible explanation is that integrated complexity is a spontaneous manifestation as it does not proceed from a mechanism. That which is not a mechanism, or does not have teleological information, cannot be the sufficient cause of a machine, its functionality, or its existence, as that would be the same as getting something from nothing, something more form that which is essentially less; which is a logical contradiction.…sufficient causality dictates that a spontaneous functional complexity which cannot be reduced to simpler or non-complex mechanisms can only be the produce of an intelligence. You cannot have an infinite regress of mechanisms as a sufficient explanation for integrated complexity. Given the current evolutionary modal of biological organisms, at some point a thing will become so simple that it will cease to be a mechanism and thus you will cease to have a mechanical explanation for functionality. Thus you either get integrated complexity out of nothing at all or rather some intelligence intended nature to spontaneously develop complex integrated functionality given a specific arrangement of atoms.
You are wrong. You are ignoring the intrinsic meaning of intentionality and the fact that such meaning is not present in the nature of that which is non-intentional; thus processes and complexity remain irrelevant so long as the things which make up the composition of these processes have no intentionality. You cannot get intentionality from that which is intrinsically non-intentional.It seems more reasonable that “life” (as we think of it) arose from natural processes involving a long history of molecular combination and recombination, various natural selection processes and evolution. I could be wrong
I see what you mean about “purpose” in nature. I would definitely agree that nature does seem to have a purpose or tendency (at least in our little section of the universe) towards the creation of molecular “machines”. (Hopefully I will live long enough to be able to see if we discover these “machines” on other planets as well!) I’d have to agree with Aristotle in that I don’t start out attributing this “purposefulness” to a designer. I would certainly accept a designer as an explanation but my criteria for excepting that would be as stated before.Nature is filled with purpose because it is bursting with “machines”.
Now, of course, I agree that simply to jump to an intelligent agent may not explain how the “machines” work.
And some thinkers, who recognized “purpose” in nature, did not feel it was necessary to invoke such an agent. For example, Aristotle did not posit a designer.
Thanks. I thoroughly enjoy these discussions. I find that talking to people with a different point of view helps me evaluate the validity of my own positions.However, it is not clear that the Darwinists have succeeded in dismissing the idea of an external intelligent agent. Talking about such agent may not help us do “science” but it is, nonetheless, philosophically irresistible.
That’s why I think your questions quoted above are quite provocative and delightful.
There’s a lot of vague terms floating around. Let’s try to focus in on some concrete examples.I am claiming that while science can in principle explain integrated complexity with other integrated complex objects, it cannot in principle sufficiently reduce integrated complexity to that which is not a mechanism or machine.
I did?My friend, you just outlined a great inductive argument for an intelligent agent designing/creating nature.
These are great questions!Why order instead of disorder? If you say ordered laws of nature, then how did these laws become ordered?
How does God create? By that I mean, what methods does it use?It seems more logical to say that an ordered cause made the order in nature than not, pertaining to ordered matter itself or ordered laws of nature. Thus, this order which precedes natural order must be non-temporal and outside of time, and we just happen to call this original order God.
I think I see what you’re saying. So God is much less complex than we are.This order by essence, is the simplest of all orders which gave rise to more complex order.(There is evidence of this in nature with fractals.) Thus, the question of needing a complex creator or more than one creator is rid of due to the fact there can be a one utmost simple order, uncaused cause, unmoved mover etc.
That is a very interesting take. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone describe their view of God quite in that way. I don’t know if I accept it, but it’s definitely something I’ll have to think more about. Thank you.God by essence is the simplest of all realities,this is traditional Catholic teaching,; however, this simplicity has a great deal of complex potential withn it.(Fractals are extremely simple mathematical equations which are almost infinitley complex, thus God is even simpler and thus infinitely complex.)
I wouldn’t say fractals are extremely simple equations (like e=mc^2), if you look at the derivations of a fractal series they’re actually quite complex"I think I see what you’re saying. So God is much less complex than we are. "
God by essence is the simplest of all realities,this is traditional Catholic teaching,; however, this simplicity has a great deal of complex potential withn it.(Fractals are extremely simple mathematical equations which are almost infinitley complex, thus God is even simpler and thus infinitely complex.)
Simplicty in Aquinas means existing God within Himself without change or movement with an iummutable nature.