Cool. I think we really are getting somewhere. Let me respond to a few specifics and then I'll end with a few more general comments.
I think I'm starting to understand what you're saying. I concede that there is no way to distinguish between your kind of universe and mine. I would still say that my view is more reasonable.
This is the only sort of acknowledgement I was looking for. Of course, by definition we regard our own views as "more reasonable," and that is why they are our own views. But the fact is that we all have a standpoint, and we all have different sets of knowledge (none of us can know everything), and that can make it seem like our own views are more secure than they actually are.
I was just reminded of the blind men and an elephant story. Perhaps you've heard of it. A king asks a number of blind men to describe an elephant. So each ends up feeling a different part of the elephant, one the snout, and one a tusk, and one a leg, and so forth, and they then describe what they're feeling as if this was the whole of what the elephant was. When trying to get at some of the basic questions of the universe, the problem is so much bigger. You've read stuff I haven't read, and vice-versa. We've lived different lives, and have different biases. And it's all magnified when you're talking about matters that can't be fully answered deductively.
Keep mind mind that I do not "believe" that life arose simply by coincidence. Life arose because the conditions happened to be the right conditions for life to arise. If the universe is what we can see/measure, then life arising by chance is a plausible hypothesis.
I agree that it is indeed quite a plausible hypothesis. If I seemed to say otherwise, then I was not being sufficiently clear. I simply regard the view I've been expounding as marginally more likely. But after all, if the universe is so vast, and so many billions of years old, then the idea that in one remote place (or perhaps more than one), given all that time and all that space, that the conditions necessary for life would arise, and then that life would be actualized, is a very reasonable theory to hold. Through high school and most of undergrad I was convinced that this was the most reasonable explanation.
And in truth, as you may have noticed, my preference for the argument I've expounded actually has less to do with God and more to do with the nature of life itself. I think one can subscribe to the sort of pan-psychism I describe (although I shudder to use this term, because it suggests that elemental matter is far more "conscious" than I would ever take it to be) without resorting to God. For me it's more a matter of tracing the phenomenon of consciousness to its roots, and being unable to find a neat end-point, and then suspecting that perhaps it's more reasonable to think that there is no such end-point.
The questions "why should existence be possible?" or "why should there be conditions that make life possible?" are of course valid and interesting. But they do have responses other than yours. The most known response would be the Anthropic Principle. That even seems easier to understand than your position. Quantum theory strongly suggests the possibility of many worlds, and in that case only realities compatible with life would have beings capable of wondering about it. I maintain, however, that until we have a reason to pick one view over another, atheism makes the fewest assumptions.
The anthropic principle to me is an interesting and valid truth to consider, but to me it me it doesn't say much regarding the origin of life either way. Sure, the fact that we're here now to talk about it doesn't mean that the universe was necessarily being led this way, or -- to more nearly approach my own argument -- that there's something about matter in the universe itself that has a tendency to create life. But on the other hand, the anthropic principle doesn't discount this possibility, either. It just reminds us to be suspicious of it.
As for having the fewest assumptions, I might argue with you on that. Of course, my most ingrained assumptions are ones that I do not even realize I make, so fundamental are they to my worldview. The same with you, of course. And to maintain the present example, I would argue it is simpler to imagine that there is no neat dividing line between life and non-life, and that this helps to explain the emergence of what we
call "life" when the proper conditions arose. My assumption is of a consistency between human beings with their "interior dimension" which can never be fully observed by an outsider (even if the universe
is fully deterministic, we cannot experience another's experience as
they experience it) and an analogous phenomenon in electrons, whose (externally observed) behavior we cannot fully predict. Your assumption seems to be that we can draw a proper line between life and non-life, conscious and non-conscious, and that consciousness -- widely construed -- is a phenomenon peculiar to higher forms of life, which can be explained by purely mechanical interactions of "dead" matter. Which of these explanations assumes more? Well, I'd say yours, but that's only because I find my own view more feasible.
Your argument is actually why I have a big problem with inductivism. Karl Popper is the one thinker who has made the biggest impact on my worldview. I hold the view that induction falls short at providing useful explanations. What is the point of an approach that can prove anything and nothing at the same time? You have concocted a "feel" for what the nature of the universe is, and that view seems engineered to provide you with comfort or meaning. I understand what you're saying, truly. I have in the past thought along those lines, but I couldn't bring myself to accept it because it felt a bit empty to me (actually, I talked to a good friend about it at length, and now he holds a similar view to yours).
It's funny, probably my biggest influence is process thinker Charles Hartshorne, and he seems to be a great admirer of Popper and makes fairly frequent reference to Popperian logic, and it was because of my interest in Hartshorne that I picked up Popper's
Logic of Scientific Discovery. As of yet, I have never made the time to read it. That's just one of many areas where I'm lacking, and here you have the advantage of me.
I don't know how much you know about modern rationalism, but I feel that we need to understand each other's view a little more deeply. I recommend The Fabric of Reality or The Beginning of Infinity by the incredible scientist/science philosopher David Deutsch. I would love to hear a recommendation of yours that distills the essence of your argument.
I've just ordered
The Beginning of Infinity from Amazon. Both books look good. I was having fun just looking at the previewed portions. I make no guarantee at being able to slog through the whole thing anytime soon... I have lots of other reading I should be doing as well. But I will do at least a preliminary skimming-through when I get it (I see he provides chapter summaries, which should be helpful in this regard), and it'll be there on my shelf in any case whenever I do find the time to read it more fully. Deutsch and Popper both.
In terms of my own recommendation of one book, that's a bit hard. Ideally, it would be Whitehead's
Process and Reality. But the truth is that this seminal work in process philosophy is so opaque that few people actually come to be process thinkers because of it -- rather, they approach it after reading a more understandable process text. That book for me was Charles Hartshorne's
Divine Relativity. But from reading your thoughts and arguments, I'm not sure this is the right one for you.
I suppose that if I had to recommend one book for you to pick up, it would be Hartshorne's
Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. The drawback here is that it is not the most unified of texts. Like many of Hartshorne's books, most of the chapters were individually published essays that have been slightly edited and placed in an order that
sort of makes sense. But sometimes the transition between chapters can still be jarring. Nonetheless, the book represents Hartshorne at the height of his powers, which is saying something for a guy who lived to be 103 and had an active academic career into his 90s. In any case, the flip side is that it lends itself to jumping around and just reading the chapters that catch your attention.
As far as the more general comments I said I wanted to end with... I want to state clearly, first of all, that on the continuum of atheism and theism, I still consider myself as falling far more on the atheist end of the scale. In general, I find the average atheist more convincing and more coherent than the average theist. Secondly, if I have seemed to advance my arguments for God and abiogenesis with great assurance, then it has been only for the sake of simplicity, clarity, and brevity. Had I the time, I could and would construct other alternative explanations, including atheistic ones. There are days when I myself see the concept of a God as ultimately superfluous.
Yet, though I am
very suspicious of religious reasoning in general, I am also -- to a lesser extent -- suspicious of some of the assumptions that secularism and modern science make, assumptions which do a far better job at hiding themselves than religious assumptions do. As I said in the original post of mine that I pointed you to: "Any scientific theory rests on the shoulders of a metaphysics -- a comprehensive view of how the universe works -- whether that metaphysics is stated or not. We don't get to ignore the need for metaphysical speculation simply because of the liklihood that we will get very much of it wrong... because it isn't any less wrong when it's unstated. It's just disguised better."
I am convinced that it is not always adequate for different philosophies merely to argue on the level of a few contested issues. There's a need for total immersion, for taking on an entirely new set of assumptions from your own, and then running with it and seeing where it leads. This is what I did with process philosophy. I used to be an atheist, now I am an agnostic, convinced that neither atheism or theism can be proved conclusively, and I think I will probably remain so. But I do think that the idea of God remains an important one to consider, even if God is only construed in a loose metaphorical sense. I am in no way convinced that process philosophy is right about everything -- and especially there are times when I think process philosophy as a whole could be stated
more intelligently without resorting to God -- but I continue to entertain some of what I may regard as the more dubious notions of process philosophy because they are a part of the whole, and process philosophy as a whole has struck me as highly intuitively appealing. And at some point, after all, it all comes down to intuition.
I am also continually impressed by the nature of language and all its wonders and pitfalls. Ambiguities in language can lead to us seemingly agree while actually greatly disagreeing, or seeming to disagree and yet actually agreeing in large part while only arguing over semantics. I could go on for great length about this, as it's a fascinating subject for me. But suffice it to say that I think we can at least come to an agreement on the boundaries of knowledge even if we may not ultimately agree speculatively on the most likely metaphysical theories of the universe's fundamental operations.
In any case, this has been a useful discussion for me so far. Hopefully it has been for you, as well.
