This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
CopperCicada · M
The complexity argument is slippery.
One says that a toad is sufficiently complex... at least more complex than a rock or sand... so an entity must have designed it.
The first tripping point is that why does that creator need to be a deity? Why not an alien? Why not pan-spermia?
Another tripping point is that things around us are so complex that only a deity (or alien) could create them, not natural selection, then we're basically placing God behind a curtain of computational complexity. Can't know a toad, can't know God...
... but there's a tripping point there as the religious person would say that scripture says this and that about God... and that they have a personal relationship with God. So then that is a little uneasy. God is so complex and ineffable that he can make a giraffe, which is too complex for our little minds... but God tells us whether to get a #4 or a #5 at the McDonald's drive through...
... it seems that incongruity points to God and consciousness being co-emergent. It is said that consciousness is an epiphenomenon arising from complex matter. Maybe so is God? Or God is an emergent phenomenon arising from consciousness?
One says that a toad is sufficiently complex... at least more complex than a rock or sand... so an entity must have designed it.
The first tripping point is that why does that creator need to be a deity? Why not an alien? Why not pan-spermia?
Another tripping point is that things around us are so complex that only a deity (or alien) could create them, not natural selection, then we're basically placing God behind a curtain of computational complexity. Can't know a toad, can't know God...
... but there's a tripping point there as the religious person would say that scripture says this and that about God... and that they have a personal relationship with God. So then that is a little uneasy. God is so complex and ineffable that he can make a giraffe, which is too complex for our little minds... but God tells us whether to get a #4 or a #5 at the McDonald's drive through...
... it seems that incongruity points to God and consciousness being co-emergent. It is said that consciousness is an epiphenomenon arising from complex matter. Maybe so is God? Or God is an emergent phenomenon arising from consciousness?
suzie1960 · 61-69, F
@CopperCicada
Another tripping point is that things around us are so complex that only a deity (or alien) could create them,
That just adds another, unnecessary, layer. If one goes down that path, as that creator must be even more complex only a superior creator could have created it. Any alternative explanation could more easily be applied to the things around us.