[MD] "100% confident"

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Craig --


[Ham]:
> Basically, a self-supporting universe which organizes its elements to 
> produce
> conscious life makes no sense without a designer.

[Craig]:
> Does a self-supporting universe which DOESN'T organize its elements to
> produce conscious life make sense without a designer?  If so, then you 
> need
> to provide empirical grounds why conscious life could not emerge from it.
> Would it be that it is impossible to evolve so, or just that there hasn't 
> been
> enough time elapsed to do so?  It seems risky to base a metaphysics on the
> argument from design.

Making sense is fundamental to understanding and philosophy.  If nothing 
makes sense, philosophy is
meaningless, and so is the universe.  To imagine the universe as bereft of 
cognizant awareness is a nihilistic fantasy.  Not only would there be no 
awareness of it, there would be no value in it.  If you don't believe 
sensibility is foundational, you've rejected the very point of human 
existence.

[Ham]:
> The first principle of metaphysics is that nothing comes from nothing.

[Craig]:
> This might be the first principle of YOUR metaphysics, but hardly the
> first principle of every metaphysics.  If a positron & an electron can
> collide to annihilate each other out of existence, why could they not have
> both jointly & simultaneously come into existence?

Such analogies are pure conjecture in the absence of experience.  Even 
Pirsig posits experiential awareness as the "cutting edge of reality".  In 
my view, electrons and positrons, quarks and anti-matter, are intellectual 
constructs of value-sensibility.  Their existence depends on your 
experience.

[Ham]:
:> To dismiss an uncreated source out of hand...is prejudicial and
> narrow-minded.

[Craig]:
> If one can't dismiss an uncreated source, then one can't dismiss an
> uncreated world & if one can't  dismiss an uncreated world, then
> why is a designer needed?

One may dismiss anything he wants to, just as one may take everything for 
granted, as many do.
If scientists took such a position, it would be the end of empirical 
investigation and material advancement.  What is this postmodern obsession 
to deny meaning and purpose in the world?  Are enlightened humans so 
arrogant that they refuse to acknowledge the choreography of the universe as 
beyond their finite intelligence?

[Ham]
> (even) if there were a physical world, it would be meaningless without
> cognizant awareness from which all knowledge and value
> (including morality) are derived.

[Craig]:
> So the world would have been meaningless at creation before cognizant
> awareness evolved, so what?

Think about it, Craig.  Take out the "befores" and "afters" that are 
limitations of human sensibility, and try to evaluate your world for what it 
IS.  Meaning and purpose do not change over time.  You are as much part of 
your world now as you were before the Big Bang.

[Craig]:
> Ham,
> Has your forthcoming book had any peer review?

No, and neither has my life experience.  These are my conclusions and my 
values, and no one knows them better than I do.  Subordinating my concepts 
to peer review would only bend them to conform to the collective mind. 
There's a plentitude of published works out there aimed at making us think 
like "everybody else".   Consider the school texts that are brainwashing our 
next generation to regard multiculturalism and egalitarianism as the only 
kind of enlightened society.  Soon individual ideas will be denounced as 
anarchy, and human achievement will be reduced to the lowest common 
denominator.

But thanks for the suggestion.

--Ham