Monday, May 19, 2008

A comment...

This could have applied here as well.

Are you seriously arguing that the astronomically improbable specifications necessary for the existence of Life just happened to happen based on “chance”/nothing but your own statements are transcendently significant and happen to summarize some sort of knowledge of the entire Cosmos? Sheer size? It’s not even clear what you imagine size has to do with it. Is one supposed to imagine that given enough “size” that which is illogical, irrational and unintelligible will become intelligent and intelligible based on “luck”/nothing?

What is chance, an effect without a cause or a cause without an effect? If Chance were a sentient god and we could ask about the nature of who it was would it reply, “I AM that I AM.”??? If it is uncaused, it would seem so.

I was thinking about this more because apparently one of Richard Dawkins main arguments is that given the way he has gradually evolved to imagines things (as biologists typically do) God needs a cause. And if God is complex then according to his logic God needs a more complex cause and so on. It's ironic that Dawkins would focus on a theological point which rests on an ignorance of the nature of God that has already been specified by prophets and philosophers for millennia* when it's "chance" and "luck" that need a cause. The notion of chance is not defined by knowledge, it's the absence of knowledge and an inability to account for cause and effect which causes people to attribute things to chance. A mental illusion in the minds of persons is the only thing that the notion of chance causes, it's nothing physical. It's really quite odd that "chance" would be so widely advanced in the name of science on issues like the origins of Life or the origins of a Cosmos favorable to it when chance is defined an the absence of knowledge of physical cause and effect. As a natural philosopher and early scientist Aristotle would certainly find it odd and ultimately illogical to deny the existence of an unmoved Mover the way that Dawkins does.

*(God is simply the uncaused Cause of astronomically complex events.)

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