From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Aug 25 2004 - 19:29:22 BST
MSH,
> scott said:
> Of course, one can just forget about the Trinity, but I have found
> the same sort of mystery in human consciousness. The main answers to
> the mystery (idealism and materialism) are understandable, and wrong,
> since they attempt to solve the mystery by redefining one half or the
> other of consciousness phenomena out of existence.
>
> msh says:
> Maybe a slight disagreement here. It seems to me that people often
> create mysteries in order to solve them. The mystery of the
> "purpose" of life is the prime example. It seems to me that humans
> see (or, more accurately, create) purpose in their own lives and
> therefore can't believe that life itself is without purpose. They
> solve the "mystery" by positing the existence of God, not seeing that
> all they are doing is replacing one mystery with another.
What about the mystery of consciousness? Unless someone can show me how one
set of electrons and quarks can be aware of another set -- not just flip a
switch to indicate a yes or no answer to the existence of some pattern or
other, but to experience the conscious phenomenon of seeing that pattern in
all its four-dimensional glory -- then there is a mystery, as long, that
is, as one assumes that consciousness is derived from the nonconscious.
The existence of this mystery is not, to be sure, solved by positing the
existence of God (even if one were to say that consciousness is
fundamental, then one still hasn't shown that such an Ultimate is, say,
loving.) But it does show me that Darwinism is hopeless as a basis for
explaining the existence of human beings, and so there is no reason to
accept it as a basis for biological evolution (that is, that evolution can
proceed solely through random mutations and natural selection.)
(BTW, I think there are also problems with the Intelligent Design theory of
evolution, but I'd rather not get into that at present.)
- Scott
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