Greta wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:33 am Humans are part of nature. What humans are doing is what nature is doing. Nature tends to be underestimated. The Earth has produced humanity with perhaps more interesting things yet to come. Humans are just the most articulate expression of the Earth so far. Sixty million years ago it was the dinosaurs. Three hundred million years ago it was trilobites. Two billion years ago it was prokaryotes. Before that it was simply rock.
seeds wrote: Yes, and before that there was (and still is) an informationally-based, “mind-like” substance (the quantum underpinning of reality) that is capable of being shaped into absolutely anything “imaginable.”
I’m not that concerned with the smallness or graininess (i.e., the infinitesimal “pixelation”) of reality, other than the fact that it seems to be related to why the phenomenal features of the universe appear to us in such “high resolution.”Greta wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:33 am Could be. Your thought process here recalls Democritus's atomism, with everything made of smaller things (which is fine). However, guessing attributes of the finest grain of reality, though, is a much more fraught activity and not something that Democritus, a highly disciplined thinker for his day, did not do.
I was merely suggesting that the malleability of the fundamental substance from which reality is formed seems to resemble the malleability of the substance that forms our thoughts and dreams (hence its “mind-like” quality).
In that case, should we all just give up seeking the truth, Greta?
Surely that big beautiful creative mind of yours realizes that just because humans in the past have indeed been wrong in their presumed answers to the big questions, does not mean that real answers do not exist, right?
Furthermore, even if the “truth” was presented to humans, it is highly questionable whether the majority of humans are even conscious enough to comprehend it.
Clearly, dogs and cats, or even chimpanzees are not conscious enough to understand certain (if any) aspects of the human level of existence, so why presume that humans are not in a similar situation when it comes to the higher truths of reality?
(Obviously, Nick's cave reference comes to mind in that last statement.)
seeds wrote: Furthermore, it is a substance that appears to have been “impregnated,” not only with an inherent teleological impetus to bring us into existence as the culminating apex to the successive entities you mentioned (from rock to prokaryotes to trilobites to dinosaurs to humans), but also with every possible ingredient and means to complete the task.
Seems a lot to ask of “nature,” which is basically just an anthropomorphic rendering of the word “chance” dressed up in a mother's apron.
Earlier you stated that prior to prokaryotes there was “simply rock.”Greta wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:33 am The biosphere is growing, maturing and developing more or less like any of its denizens; it has its ups and downs but usually it's growing and evolving. Growth and development itself is not chance. Barring mishap, life is probably inevitable in suitable conditions, with abiogenesis shaped by the physical laws. However, the direction and success (ie. not dying) of any biology relies a great deal on chance.
We have discussed this before in that what you refer to as being “simply rock” was in fact a vast system of prerequisite ingredients and ordered processes that had to be in place before prokaryotes could even begin to come into existence.
And the point is that it is the belief that the manifestation of that complex foundational order was somehow achieved via the blind influences of gravity and thermodynamics is the chance issue to which I was referring, not the trivial chance circumstances that arise within the context of an already thriving biosphere.
We seem to be revisiting that “...just give me one profound miracle...” idiom, wherein everything else after that is easy to explain.
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