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Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre  Nope. That would be unreasonable. What I reject is the claim that design is a better explanation. It specifies an undefinable entity working through undefined means as part of the 'explanation', which is no explanation at all. |
Random coincidence isn't an explanation either. I just happen to believe the facts imply design. We are all agnostic because we don't know but I believe we could eventually know. I'm just pointing out that atheists don't have a leg up on theists; just the bible. We don't know fundamentally what reality is so we don't know what exactly determines the laws of nature. However, if the foundation of those laws are the result of random volatile energy then why is the universe so consistent and fine-tuned? You have to resort to unverifiable theories about a multiverse or billion previous big bangs before that didn't end in heat death to negate the argument. The anthropic principle however could very well be verifiable.
Reality could just as easily be created by our perception than the other way around. Because we can only know with certainty that we "know" than why should we assume there is an objective reality at all? In which case God could be called the grand total of awareness. Isn't that simpler than assuming we are the product of cosmic accident occurring "out there" in "reality"?
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Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre It is like what it is like to see the colour blue because our retina detects light of a certain wavelength, and generates and sends signals to our visual processing centres. We attend to those signals, either because the blue thing is something we have chosen to focus on, or it's something that has triggered a sense of alertness (perhaps it's a blue ball flying towards our head). That attention signals our memory and may construct a recollection of previous experiences of that or similar blue things. Accompanying those memories are emotional responses which help shape the immediate emotional response. And on top of all that is the awareness of those various processes, which is a function of attention. (note that I've left out a hell of a lot of detail because, well, that would take a few books to cover)
I truly don't understand where the problem is... |
You are just describing the integration that correlates to a conscious state. You cannot explain what it is like to see the color blue unless you have experienced it. I'm really just repeating myself so:
Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For more indepth reading:
Papers on Consciousness (David Chalmers) click the top link.