Life with purpose

For example, it would be foolish to ask the quantum physicist, "How does quantum tunneling explain how chlorophyll makes plants green?" or to ask the botanist, "What does our current understanding of mechanisms of photosynthesis tell us about fundamental particles that compose atoms?" Such questions extend beyond the empirical bounds and limitations of a theory and the tools used by the scientists in each respective field.

I do commend ID researchers/theorists for pushing against materialism, and I do agree that their research is not invalidated by their religious/political beliefs.


But regarding these questions quoted above, they aren't thought to be unanswerable even if they don't fall into a particular domain. And in fact quantum behavior has been invoked as a strong contender for explaining photosynthesis. There's also the question of whether the study of life will reveal new physics.

Of course ID goes beyond questions of the quantum, concerning fundamental questions of reality. Why I said ID is properly a branch of parapsychology, which is a pan-discipline branch of science. You have to include thoughts about God and non-local communication of microrganisms which only parapsychology does. Not to mention the potential of Psi effects on epigenetics and 'random' mutation.

This doesn't even get into Ufology, which concerns the possible influence of the "Neighbors".

Thus, the scientific theory of intelligent design simply cannot identity the designer because it is not a question which can be addressed through the methods of science. At this point, this question can only be answered via faith, or divine revelation, and other religious "ways of knowing."

Ah but just as one can offer/critique the idea of "super-determinism" or "Many Worlds" as ways to get around quantum indeterminism, so to can we put some thought into the question of design. And while believers in the Multiverse make a case based on their interpretations of what reality should be like, I doubt its adherents would say there is just no way science could ever tell us if MWI is incorrect.

And regarding designers there can even be explanations that could link ID and Cosmological Fine Tuning.

Some potential examples:


Bernard Haisch, who I mentioned earlier in the thread, gives us an Idealist design explanation for photon indeterminism and goes on to explain his reasoning.



Prescott has given some ideas on how this designer might work from an Information Realism perspective, noting that the very method could show this beings fallibility.

Of course, this presupposes that there is an objective - a goal - and that there is a consciousness capable of holding this objective in mind and making the necessary selections. Both premises take us very far from naturalism or materialism, and very far from mainstream science as it's practiced today. Whether this is a feature or a bug depends on one's personal worldview. 

It might be objected that the whole procedure is unnecessary, since if the mind in question already knows what it wants, why should it need to spin out a multiplicity of scenarios, most of which are dead ends? But I'm suggesting that while the mind may know its goal, it may not know the best way to get there. It may have to let a million pathways take temporary shape in order to find, by hit and miss, the one pathway that will actually work. In other words, the mind we're talking about may be very, very smart, but not omniscient. Though its resources and capabilities are vastly greater than ours, it may still have to grope its way to the best answer to a given problem. 

The same idea would apply, naturally, to macroevolutionary change - not to microevolution (relatively trivial changes in coloration, size, resistance to antibiotics, etc.), but major alterations significant enough to bring about new species.

Peter Sas has given similar speculation based on this ideas relating the Ur-Mind of Idealism to physics & math:

...Thus, the set of real numbers is said to be “maximally larger” than the countable set of all possible algorithms. So there simply aren’t enough algorithms to compute all the real numbers; by far most of the real numbers are uncomputable and have therefore totally random decimal expansions.

Could this, perhaps, explain why the universe is imperfect, despite being (on our account) the mathematical self-image of God, i.e. self-causing Absolute Self-Awareness? Having generated the continuum through the recursivity of its self-awareness and its interlevel self-identity (which, as we have seen, gives all f:N→N and thus all real numbers), ASA looks for those patterns in the continuum in which it can mirror its own essence (which is self-awareness), only to find that patterns form an infinitesimally small portion of the continuum, since almost all real numbers are uncomputable. So ASA’s trying to find its own image in the continuum is a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack… only much more difficult! As said, the probability of randomly selecting a computable number out of the continuum approaches zero. One could say that ASA, trying to see its own mathematical mirror image, instead lost itself in the “labyrinth of the continuum” (as Leibniz called the complex of unsolved problems and paradoxes surrounding the real numbers). And still, we are here, there is this ordered universe in which we find ourselves. True, it is not perfect, that is, it is the not the true image of the Absolute, but still it is there and it is computable. So, despite its near impossibility, the Absolute must nevertheless have succeeded in finding order in the arch-chaos of the continuum which the Absolute had itself created. It’s a bit like that old question: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable obstacle? Well, what happens is the creation of this refractory miracle which we call the universe…

Now can we get from these speculative ideas to the biological evidence from ID? Maybe not in the present day, but the variety of explanations drawing from science & math makes it odd to say:

"it is not a question which can be addressed through the methods of science"


After all it seems quite obvious an investigation into any linkage between Psi and epigenetics could provide some explanation of how evolution can squeeze into the probability crunch calculations ID seems to depend on.

I get why ID researchers don't want to ask this question, because it immediately preferences candidates who are not omniscient. And proximal causation grounds that search to something/someone far closer to ourselves than the kind of deity that could make the universe.

Do we send the goo?

The ability to stir new life into being, all across the Universe, compels us to ask why life matters in the first place

Rather than regarding the overwhelming majority of planets and moons as failures unworthy of further study, we should instead recognise them for what they are: they’re not empty. In fact, a very high number of them might have been (and might yet be still) on the cusp of flourishing with life, if provided the specific potential to do so. What if a significant percentage of those planets and moons require only a few hundred kilogrammes of ‘the right chemical stuff’ to spark their own, unique biotic revolutions?

This is not panspermia, or even terraforming. Here I elaborate one of many possible applications of prebiotic chemistry, protospermia, which should be debated as a technologically viable human endeavour. If humans are capable of instigating multiple origins of life under a broader array of circumstances than life currently exists, ought we to do it?

But couldn't we also be the product of protospermia? I mentioned this in the Bugs of Darwinism thread, that Gordon White had some thoughts on how a virus might be a prime candidate for seeding life on fallow worlds.

Do we send the goo?


But couldn't we also be the product of protospermia? I mentioned this in the Bugs of Darwinism thread, that Gordon White had some thoughts on how a virus might be a prime candidate for seeding life on fallow worlds.

I don't think there are all those thousands or millions  of planets out there in the galaxy just on the edge of developing life -  just a few random chemical combinations away. From this article, on panspermia and the possible origin of the Cambrian Explosion:    

"The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions (Appendix A), an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1981, 1982, 2000). All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure (Deamer, 2011; Walker and Wickramasinghe, 2015). It would thus seem reasonable to go to the biggest available “venue” in relation to space and time."

Even if a panspermia OOL is true this ultimately just kicks the can down the road, doesn't resolve the OOL problem. So the ultimate cause of the origin is? Infinite time or an infinite number of universes might provide all the time needed for abiogenesis by trial-and-error elimination in uncountable numbers of warm little ponds throughout the Cosmos to put together the incredible phenomenon of the living cell with its thousands of interacting genes driving the processes of cellular life.

From Appendix A in the above paper:
 

"Hoyle and Wickramasinghe (1981) concluded that the improbabilities for the non-random assemblage of living proteins and nucleic acids are so huge (1 part in 10**40,000) that maybe an 'Infinite Universe' or super intelligent God would be required to produce a living miracle, which then spread and evolved on a Cosmic scale.”

Even if a panspermia OOL is true this ultimately just kicks the can down the road, doesn't resolve the OOL problem. So the ultimate cause of the origin is? Infinite time or an infinite number of universes might provide all the time needed for abiogenesis by trial-and-error elimination in uncountable numbers of warm little ponds throughout the Cosmos to put together the incredible phenomenon of the living cell with its thousands of interacting genes driving the processes of cellular life.

I agree with all this, but at the least panspermia is up for scientific investigation. Is there some code in DNA that indicate an artificial hand? Is there some commonality between our own DNA and the DNA we might find of life (or former life) upon Venus or Mars?

At the very least, if panpsermia is true then we'd rationally be more inclined to pick the religion of the aliens who did the seeding than any of our own religions. [Which isn't to say that their faiths are necessarily more grounded in reality.] Probably why IDers keep up throwing up their hands and pretending the identity of the designer is beyond scientific investigation.

In the same way that physicists who dismiss even the possibility of their science confirming or at least indicating an Idealist interpretation are being irrational or deliberately deceptive, so to with IDers.

I agree with all this, but at the least panspermia is up for scientific investigation. Is there some code in DNA that indicate an artificial hand? Is there some commonality between our own DNA and the DNA we might find of life (or former life) upon Venus or Mars?

At the very least, if panpsermia is true then we'd rationally be more inclined to pick the religion of the aliens who did the seeding than any of our own religions. [Which isn't to say that their faiths are necessarily more grounded in reality.] Probably why IDers keep up throwing up their hands and pretending the identity of the designer is beyond scientific investigation.

In the same way that physicists who dismiss even the possibility of their science confirming or at least indicating an Idealist interpretation are being irrational or deliberately deceptive, so to with IDers.

Aliens seeding stuff is another just wild off to the side thing I don't buy into. But then I don't believe in wild sci fi aliens in general. Might be a weird frogdog or super intelligent worms somewhere in the galaxy but I don't reckon we were made from alien goo.

And the god part of intelligent design is definitely a hard selling point. I've always leant towards the creatures controlling their own evolution thing personally. Stuff like PK, whether it be subtle or like, marco, could even play into that for evidence of how it could happen.

Aliens seeding stuff is another just wild off to the side thing I don't buy into. But then I don't believe in wild sci fi aliens in general. Might be a weird frogdog or super intelligent worms somewhere in the galaxy but I don't reckon we were made from alien goo.

And the god part of intelligent design is definitely a hard selling point. I've always leant towards the creatures controlling their own evolution thing personally. Stuff like PK, whether it be subtle or like, marco, could even play into that for evidence of how it could happen.

I'm somewhat neutral but leaning toward skeptical on panspermia, but it's worth investigating.

I think the challenge with biological agents' motivational goals directing evolution in sort of psychic feedback loop is the idea of systems that are irreducibly complex. If you accept such systems they probably have to exist via top-down intervention.

As I've stated numerous times before but will again, my main issue with these sorts of ideas is that they're never really about people looking for "purpose" in life, they're looking for someone to order them around. I see zero possibility of objective forms of purpose, meaning, morality, etc, yet I have no shortage of them in my life. Why? Because I chose my own, I don't need an external authority to tell me what to do, nor do I want one.

Furthermore, it doesn't seem to me like this is a case of biology having purpose any more than you can predict where a rock will end up if you roll it down a hill. That doesn't seem remotely teleological. It's just going to happen to end up there because that's the direction its going. PSI and evolution generally points towards a evolutionary endpoint where creatures have total control over themselves and their environment they live in, as that's the single most survivable thing there could be. It doesn't require any special mystical purpose, just the forces we're already aware of. Things that try to keep existing tend to exist longer than things that don't. Therefore that trait combined with many other factors makes such an endpoint inevitable. Seeing high survival value in something that's really good at surviving shouldn't be surprising.

I definitely think that there is a drive for objective meaning. I think if there's one good thing that came from the enlightenment style of ideas, it's a push for subjective meaning in life. Even if there was a god ordering stuff around I doubt he'd be sitting there going "I'm gonna manipulate this fish so one day his descendant makes burgers at McDonalds.". People just gotta find their own way I think. Even if there's an afterlife you'll probably just be having to make your own way.

Even if there's an afterlife you'll probably just be having to make your own way.

It's interesting to see some of the medium relayed accounts and compare them to the NDE ones. A fair amount of the former suggest afterlives that are a lot like this one. Some people even have to get jobs and go to work.

Though Myers - if you accept it was him doing the cross-correspondences - communicated through a medium that you can go to higher levels that more resemble NDE accounts and accounts of Heaven.

I definitely think that there is a drive for objective meaning. I think if there's one good thing that came from the enlightenment style of ideas, it's a push for subjective meaning in life. Even if there was a god ordering stuff around I doubt he'd be sitting there going "I'm gonna manipulate this fish so one day his descendant makes burgers at McDonalds.". People just gotta find their own way I think. Even if there's an afterlife you'll probably just be having to make your own way.

Again we are back to free will. For me, the issue of free will is central to the whole debate. I go back to what I said in another post about not being judged. We make our own decisions, good or bad, and we learn from them. Individually and collectively. I see no reason why this would change in the afterlife. That's not to say that decisions which harm others or other living things or the earthly biosphere are without consequences. The consequences are plain to see and a more "advanced" soul will recognise individual and collective responsibility. There are also consequences (not rewards - rewards imply judgement) to loving acts and being unselfish, kind and generous. It might not be obvious in the short term - or even in a single lifetime - but over the reincarnational cycle, the soul inevitably evolves.

For me, the purpose of life is to act upon our free will, accept the responsibility for those actions, and learn from them.