Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

The Varieties of Evolutionisms
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Naturalism
vs
Scripturalism

   Post 86. June 12, 2019 continued . . .

  Designed To Evolve

   Worldviews Continued

 • Atheists & Agnostics may be Naturalists by default, since the natural world is all we know via our physical senses. Yet, because they identify most references to “God” with the mercurial tyrannical despots of the Torah and other ancient myths, they find it easier to believe in an eternal succession of imperfect worlds, than an immortal demanding deity. They prefer knowable Nature to inscrutable Spirits.

“Deism holds that there is a god who created the universe but that this god had no further influence.   The deist’s god has no involvement in the affairs of man and bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible. Einstein was probably the most notable deist.   He believed the laws of physics to suggest a creator, but he thought this creator to be too great an intellect to have any interest in us."

• That “do-nothing deity” disparagement of Deism is inaccurate and out-of-date. The early Deists had no better explanation for the existence of the world of the senses, so they accepted the general concept of a creator deity, as presented in Jewish and Christian myths, but interpreted the supernatural interventions as religious propaganda of priests & theologians (Theism). They had enough knowledge & respect for the early science of their day, to see mundane explanations for most of the magic tricks. Today, our understanding of the natural world is more comprehensive, but there are still gaps for those inclined to prefer a hands-on deity. Yet for 21st century Deists, only one supernatural miracle is necessary to qualify for the job-description of G*D : the creation of a universe from scratch – as the current cosmological evidence indicates3. Besides, the modern notion of a Great Programmer implies a “do-everything designer” 4.  

    
   Young Earth Creationism

“To hold this position requires rejection of many areas of science, namely the time scales and processes of cosmology, geology, evolution, paleontology, etc. . . . This viewpoint holds to traditional beliefs for the interpretation of the biblical account of creation. . . . Though science has changed, this viewpoint on creation has not.   It has become doctrine in some of the most conservative religious institutions. Old Earth Creationism without Evolution."

• The author of Designed To Evolve has more respect for Science, and seems to be aware of the sophistry of those who hold to biblical literalism and inerrancy. Even so, he still finds ways to reconcile bronze age science with modern knowledge of how the world works on all scales. My own excuse for the inconsistencies of old and new worldviews is that the early philosophers interpreted reality rationally, but had to explain meta-physical concepts in physical analogies that the ordinary people could grasp. Most modern people still have difficulty understanding cosmic & quantum layers of reality. So, they find it easy to take outdated figures of speech (e.g. atoms) literally. Even scientists use metaphorical language (e.g. Big Bang) as place-holders for a non-miraculous explanation for what appears to be creatio ex nihilo.5

Post 86 continued . . . click Next

3. Creation vs Self-existent
   Atheistic explanations for where the world came from tend to avoid any hints of creatio ex nihilo. Instead, they assume that our con-stantly changing physical reality is eternal. Hence, the current answer to “before the Big Bang” questions is an infinite regress of worlds within worlds. But which is more parsimonious, zillions of imperfect worlds, or a single world-maker? Which is more likely to be self-existent, a never-ending succession of finite worlds, or the infinite power of being?
   Before the Big Bang theory, most Cosmologists assumed that our universe was unique and un-bounded. Now that we know it had a beginning in time & space, the necessity for some source outside space-time is a valid assumption.

4. Programmer God :
   A competent computer programmer doesn’t have to make frequent corrections to the operation of the program. Likewise, an omniscient Creator shouldn’t have to make special interventions in order to keep the world running properly. A world-wide flood would be a sign of gross incompetence.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

5. Creation from Nothing :
   If the sudden appearance of a universe from nowhere is not a miracle, I don’t know what is. The accepted scientific explanation for the Big Bang is that a mathematical Singularity, with no physical properties, somehow transformed into a material world, with laws already in place,an in the process of inflating like a balloon. A magician would say “voila!” or “presto!”