I've got to agree with you on this point.

But, it seems to me, the assumption of a purpose inevitably means existence of willful action. Don't you think? I will have more to say, but am out of time right now. Sorry!

Didn't take only one occurrence?

More conclusion based on wishful thinking. Sorry you can't Darwin away the fact that intelligence motivates evolution. Yes constraints like environment or their dissipation of energy theory affects evolving but there would be no evolution without the intelligence and programming in the DNA that is set up for increasing the complexity of organisms. Anti-Entropy if you will.

Schroedinger's cat was alive in that particular game. I've also seen him dead and frozen solid, depending on the game.

I am primarily looking for causes. Thanks for the reminder. Looking for a purpose (asking why) is a valid question. Stopping at "I do not know" is tough for most people. Accepting a god's will as an explanation requires a logical leap that many are unprepared (and should be unprepared) to make because it requires mysticism.

I am assuming that there is a purpose to an evolving reality. I don't think that is a fallacy, however. Our lives are a series of choices, among them to create or not to create. What I have a hard time accepting is that the universe would exist at all, were it not for some being's choice to create. The default would be that nothing would exist were it not for the conscious decision of a great mind.

Looking for a purpose in a created object, followed by an attempt to replicate that created object or at least determine how it functions, is an attempt to understand the workings of a great mind. This is why I compare myself to Quentin Daniels.

It is good to hear from you again, Maritimus.

Hi, J,

I have to point out that the fallacy you are committing is to assume that there is "purpose" to an evolving reality.

Some reading of history of ancient philosophy taught me that looking for purpose leads to theology and looking for causes leads to science.

It seems to me that people who have hard time saying "I do not know" end up preferring a god's will as an explanation.

Just my opinion.

All the best.

Quite frankly I wouldn't be in this forum if I weren't looking for such a cause. Work like Dr. England's helps inform me. ewv, your incessant rambling does not add to my understanding.

Your definition of mysticism is a big part of our disagreement. There is much in this universe that is unexplained. The major questions of the origin of the universe and the origin of life, particularly consciousness are among such currently inadequately explained. "Existence exists", while true, is an inadequate explanation for why things exist as they are. Until such time as those questions are conclusively answered, we will continue to disagree. I will not be satisfied "not knowing". I said yesterday that my work was intertwined with this question. I now further say that the creation of life on a small scale is my limited attempt to answer some of these grand questions that are the subject of our disagreement.

I will offend many in this forum with this next statement. AR did not go far enough in her logic. To end with "existence exists" and not search for a cause of such existence would be like Hank and Dagny finding the motor and then not searching for its inventor. The search for the inventor is not mysticism. Mysticism is a belief in something that one cannot prove conclusively to others. The difference between you and me, ewv, is that my intellectual curiousity to adequately explain the origin of the universe and the origin of life has not been satisfied. Yours has, and I am OK with that.

I read what you say. I disagree with your premise, period.

Who the heck are you to tell me what my own point is? Things don't just happen. There is a good reason for everything.

Your misuse of concepts and naive logical fallacies in unoriginal strained rationalizations for mysticism have been proven for what they are right here on this page and many times in the past. The nature of your rationalizations has been examined and refuted for the benefit of others interested, but no argument is necessary or possible to deal with the arbitrary mysticism underlying them, which is not a "debate" and cannot be dignified as such. It is all "settled" right here on earth, not waiting for a "future life" in another realm.

A "seeming contradiction" is a paradox. What rational scientist has ever said that the difference between a closed and an open system or that the difference between equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics has "always been" a paradox? The latest "harvesting of sunlight" buzz-phrase is nothing but absorbing energy from an external source.

Your speculated infinite regress is not "suggested" by any rational knowledge or laboratory, and explains nothing. Our limited abilities, i.e., abilities that are finite like anything that exists, do not "suggest" the opposite in more "powerful beings". Like any mystic employing the "argument from design" your claimed "suggestion" of what "must" be is meaningless and contradictory, resulting in a worse "problem" than the one you started with -- far more complex, and transformed into a problem of "understanding" meaningless floating abstractions of "more powerful beings" into a mystic infinite regress of non-identity.

The existence of the universe does not "require" explanation, somehow demanding fantasizing what cannot be obtained by conceptual knowledge. The term "explanation" does not pertain to existence as such at all, as has been explained previously and which you continue to ignore. We seek as much explanation of as many _aspects_ of consciousness, life, the physical universe of planets, galaxies, etc. and their evolution as we can attain; omniscience is not possible, not a "requirement", and not license to leap into the mystical in the absence of the impossible.

Nothing in your laboratory, nothing, rationally "suggests" anything other than the nature of knowledge as finite and based on our perception of reality, "suggests" a supernatural planning by a god not acknowledged to be a god or supernatural, or "suggests" arbitrary non-sequiturs claiming there is intelligent design of either the physical universe or existence as such -- whether or not claimed to somehow be outside of existence in non-existence, i.e., nowhere because there is no such thing as that which does not exist. Your mystical creationism does not come from any laboratory. They are intertwined only as floating abstractions in your imagination.

You aren't looking for a cause. You are arbitrarily asserting a meaningless mystical source in the form of a floating abstraction you call a "plan". There is no "circumstantial evidence" for mysticism, only strained rationalizations for faith together with ad hominem arguments against a mere "few mortals" dismissed as unworthy of understanding or arguing against your supposedly special insights rationalized by manipulation of concepts out of context. "Mortals" are the only beings who _can_ think. Conceptual thought is our means of knowing the world, all that can provide "arguments", and the only means for rational discussion at all. Your dismissal of our means of knowing as inadequate and not up to your claims to knowledge of what "must" be rationalized in the name of "circumstantial evidence" for the supernatural is an attack on the human mind just as ugly as any mystic in history claiming superior knowledge.

It is _not_ irrational to say that the universe has done what it does because of what it is rather than the false alternative of "chance" versus whatever is your latest substitute for a god you won't name but now speculated as space aliens. That things have identity and act accordingly is the basis for scientific explanation. It doesn't provide it automatically, it makes it possible. It doesn't mean that there are things we don't know and have yet to learn and is not a substitute for trying to learn. It does not mean that "things happen" and nothing else is required to understand it.

You reject atheism -- the rejection of your fantasies that are meaningless and explain nothing -- for not providing you with an explanation of something that no one knows. So what? There are a lot of things you don't know, and a lot you never will. Your demand for an explanation that no one has is not a reason to reject the dismissal of your fallacious speculations. Your "must be a plan for the universe", like any "god did it" pseudo explanation, is not a default fall-back position and provides no explanation of anything. It is worthless mysticism.

And that is _not_ what you are doing.

When one doesn't know he doesn't know and stops talking about the alleged nature of what he don't know. He doesn't assert that there "must" be a "plan" and does not indulge in fantasies about space aliens somehow explaining the nature of the universe.

Do you read anything that has been explained to you? Your constant evasive repetition is worse than rude. I did not just "say" that atheism does not need to be proven. I, Ayn Rand, and many others have explained why in terms of the meaning of the concept, which you consistently evade and misrepresent. "Space travel" and your bizarre theory of space aliens "planning" the universe as a supposed explanation of complexity is entirely irrelevant. Your "choosing" to "disagree" is not rational, it is an obstinate refusal to consider what has been said to you in what is supposed to be discussion with explanation, not repetitious evasive assertion while hiding behind a claim to be a "scientist" with a laboratory as a supposed source of credibility.

That is not your point. You ignored that "causality is not teleological".

The earth evolving in a way suitable for life is not "unlikely". It is not an "accident" at all. The term "unlikely" does not pertain to it at all. Metaphysical "likely" versus "unlikely" is irrelevant and meaningless. Life requires no supernatural explanation as a "plan" to avoid endorsing an "accident", all of which is just as meaningless as talking about "odds" of what happened by the nature of things. Once again, "planning" versus metaphysical "odds" is a _false alternative_. Your repeated falling back on "accident" as the only alternative to "design" in a "plan", followed by claiming there "must" therefore be a "plan" is a fallacious argument.

You missed the point. Your chain of supposed miracles against "the odds" are not miracles either and do not require rationalizing a "plan" to avoid calling them miracles, which is just as mystical. They are not probabilistic events at all and their mistreatment in such terms is not supported by England's work, including his use of thermodynamic probabilities.

Positing a supernatural (or space alien) planner for the universe is not looking for a rational cause. The notion of an event "without a rational cause", i.e., without a cause, makes no sense to begin with. Neither does decreeing arbitrary thresholds like "10^-30" for a speculated causeless event, which meaningless premise "would have to be considered a miracle" requiring a mystic "plan" to avoid endorsing miracles. It is all arbitrary, meaningless manipulation of floating abstractions.

"Group approval versus obstinate clinging to fallacy while ignoring objections is a false alternative."
Yes, but I admire the aspect of someone sticking to what he thinks in face of criticism.
"is no argument defending a fallacious position"
I don't agree with his position, but it doesn't bother me because it doesn't appear to make scientifically falsifiable claims. He's not saying god is influencing the outcome of experiments or people's lives.

I did look at your post on Dr. England and the OP article. It's interesting.
"When any exceedingly rare event occurs, one has to look for a rational cause. "
I just don't see that. This is like someone saying the fact that many people will have a dream that appears to predict the future is cause for further research into ESP. It's exceedingly rare that one dream should predict a future event, but it's expected that in a world of billions of people some dreams will predict future events. It would be worthy of investigation is the premonitions never occurred.

Actually, they are quite intertwined. The existence of the universe requires a causal explanation. As man is thoroughly incapable at this point in history of the creation of life and has a very limited ability to create inanimate objects, this suggests that somewhere in the universe (or perhaps outside the universe), there is/are/were more intelligent and more powerful being(s).

Atheism is unproven and cannot be proven. It could possibly be disproven when man is capable of space travel. You say that atheism does not need to be proven, as did Ms. Rand. On that, we will choose to disagree, because atheism is a positive assertion, "There is no god."

I am sometimes swayed by rational explanation. In this case, the circumstantial evidence of the universe far outweighs the arguments of a few mortals, including my own. My major problem with atheism is its inability to explain the origin of the universe. If one believes in a "big bang theory" as I do, how did all of that matter get so concentrated in the first place? It is irrational to expect irrefutable proof for every other point in one's understanding of what exists, and then say that the universe just "happened" to arrange itself into the way it did. It is quite reasonable to say that you or I or anyone else may not understand how it happened, but to point to an effect (the arrangement of the universe) and not look for a cause does not make sense.