Do you think the assumption that the physical universe is is comparable to your direct knowledge that you as an intangible person exist?!
knowledge… The assumption that the physical universe exists is the result of inference from our perceptions whereas we have immediate, direct knowledge of our own activity.
What I said about the cloud was to illustrate the point that there is no rational stance from which to claim something is designed. We can say a wrist watch is designed because we know that people make wrist watches.
That is not the only reason. It is the relation of the parts to one another and to the whole that is evidence of design. We can judge whether something is designed even if we have never seen it made by a person. The DNA code is an example of a highly complex information system that could hardly have originated as the result of a series of coincidences.
We can call a cave-man’s spear designed because a sharp rock tied around a stick differs fundamentally from what we see in nature.
Not always. Some human designs are
based on designs in nature.
No one has ever seen the supernatural create something, so it would be impossible to infer or even reasonably assume that the world is created. It’s an assumption that takes too large a leap.
One step at a time! The argument is to Design
not Creation…
“happen” reveals your physicalist assumptions. It is not our ability that is the issue but the immense complexity of living organisms which points to the inadequacy of the Chance hypothesis.
You don’t have a strong understanding of my beliefs. I never said I think chance explains the complexity of living organisms. The greater improbability with which organisms organized into higher species, the less plausible chance is as a solution (that’s what chance means).
What are random mutations - without which development would not have occurred - but chance events? No one has explained
how organisms became more complex in the first place…
Organizing into more complex biological structures is, intuitively enough, more stable for the organism.
An accumulation of
supposedly slightly improbable events over billions of years amounts to a very high degree of improbability. Increased complexity leads to increased vulnerability and likelihood of failure. Higher organisms are prey to more diseases, deformities and disorders than simpler ones. Which is more stable: an amoeba or a man? Which species has survived for millions of years? Which is more numerous? Which is more likely to perish in a natural disaster?
In practice you attribute to material reality an absoluteness it does not possess. Your mind is closed to the possibility of any other reality - even within yourself. For you thoughts are just minute electrical impulses in your brain.Your notion that theists believe in an anthropomorphic Designer is not only false but irrelevant. Your physicalism conceals not only a guess but a working hypothesis that inanimate matter is the cause of everything that exists. It affects your attitude to yourself and others because you regard justice and human rights as mere fancies. That view is exceedingly obscure to theists like myself who regard the power of the mind as infinitely more adequate an explanation than blind processes and the immense value of life as a indisputable fact.
Yes, I speak from an angle, and I don’t hide that fact, but my claims stand on their own merit. Your ridiculing me for my outrageous beliefs only leads me to think that you haven’t got an adequate rebuttal of any kind.
You feel yourself at liberty to ridicule Christian beliefs but you object when your own beliefs are dissected and shown to be inadequate (not outrageous or ridiculous!). Your angle would be more convincing if you explained why my analysis of physicalism is faulty.
We are not free to choose our basic assumptions because there is one inescapable fact.
We know that we are thinking. That is our sole certainty which is the basis of all our knowledge and it highlights the primacy of the mind and the power of reason in any attempt to interpret and explain reality. It is the foundation of the evidence for Design…
I accept that we can assume unquestionably that we are thinking, but how is that evidence against physicalism and evidence for design?
It is evidence that our conscious mind with our power of reason is the primary reality. We have direct experience of design in our own activity - which entails understanding, organization and the adaptation of means to ends. As David Hume noted, there is purpose everywhere in nature. The directiveness of living organisms, in contrast to inorganic molecular structures, is clear evidence of specified complexity which has a specific goal - that of survival - which is lacking in inanimate objects. To attribute the origin of life to fortuitous combinations of molecules is to opt for that which is irrational and purposeless rather than that which is rational and purposeful - for Chance rather than Design. Which do you rely on in your daily life - coincidence or intelligence?
