And that that was naturalistic, yes.

Only in the same way I think God is naturalistic.

Sure. But what is the origin of human intellect? Isn't it "evolution", i.e a fairly naturalistic process?

Cheers

Is this a bad joke or is this your valiant attempt of reviving pre-darwinian "dualism"? If the second is the case, then I wish you good luck.

And what exactly is incorrect about thinking that a worm has an intellect of 0,0000001, a cat that of 5, a chimpanzee that of 20 and a human of 100? What exactly is this mysterious "intellect" you are talking about? Care to enlighten us?

How about saying that we do not know?
Naturalistic explanations work fairly well in the context of regular science as you would probably agree. Now, I agree with you that it may be problematical to use these explanations for answering deep metaphysical questions; but this fact "does not" create a false dichotomy in which we have to choose between a magical sky man and a never ending crap game as you claim. The correct stance should be to acknowledge that our knowledge is limited.

Nice. I do not necessarily disagree.
But answer this: If "in absolute terms intellect is natural", then would not it be wise to study it in naturalistic ways (i.e, science)?

Yes we should study about it in "naturalistic" ways. But studying about it in naturalistic ways can never give us a complete picture because the tool we use to study it, science, is flawed. Science is flawed because it depends on observation. Without observation there is no science and when we can observe those observations will sometimes lead us astray.

For instance consider an earth like planet 50 billion years from now orbiting a sun much like ours in a galaxy much like ours. If intelligent beings like humans evolved on that planet what would they see in their night sky? They would see their own galaxy and thats it. They wouldn't observe the cosmic background radition because it would be too weak to detect. If they took a hubble deep field image, they would not observe distant galaxies expanding away because everything else would have expanded to places outside the observable universe. They would have no observational evidence available to them to make the conclusion they are living in an expanding universe...the big bang theory would never be discovered. Their scientific model of the universe would be completely wrong because their observations would have led them astray.

Now understand that science is flawed and if even practiced perfectly will lead to wrong conclusions, isn't it wise to also study reality in non-naturalistic - non scientific ways too?

Still not following you. Perhaps you could make a tidy summary.

Why should we say "we don't know" when we do know intelligences can produce emergent complex systems?

Are you saying we should say "we don't know" about what produced the emergent complex system we call the universe? I agree. What I disagree with is people who say "we don't know but we know its not God"....which is what people who have thought deeply about the origins of the universe but still reject the notion of God are doing. They are saying they don't know and in the same breath taking a plausible explaination off the table...without a compelling reason other than it is more consistent with thier pre-concieved world veiw.

In basic terms intelligence or intellect is a beings ability to understand/navigate reality.

Nature is defined as the creative and controlling force in the universe. God is also defined as the creative and controlling force in the universe. Therefore God and Nature are basically the same. Theists ascribe intellect to the creative and controlling force in the universe and atheist say there is no intellect behind the creative and controlling force in the universe.

I think Bunny described my position here more clearly and more precisely when he said intelligence, rationality, consciousness, etc were brute facts of the universe.

Alright, fair enough. Now, let us agree with the scientists that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. Now it should be rather obvious that 5 billion years ago in the imaginary space that would be later occupied by the earth, there was no intellect (that is no beings with the ability to understand/navigate reality). Since there is now both an earth and intelligence on earth, obviously, we have to accept that this intelligence (like the earth it inhabits) is an emergent property of the universe. The question is the following: Do we have a good naturalistic explanation for such emergent realities (like the earth itself and the intelligence occupying it)? The answer is yes, we have such an explanation: Evolution (understood both in the traditional biological as well as its cosmic sense) adequately explains such phenomena (although we may not yet replicate certain phases of it, which is inconsequential).

So why exactly do we need any non-naturalistic explanations for the emergent reality of intelligence in the universe? Of course in a basic sense, this "intelligence" and "life" in general emerges out of the realm of non-intelligence and non-life which should necessarily have the possibility of intelligence and life in them previously (and evolution explains the process of this transformation), but I do not see how this should lead us to non-naturalistic explanations or to God for that matter.

Worms, cats, chimpanzees and humans all understand and navigate reality. Their levels of understanding and capabilities of navigation are different, that is all. There is no qualitative difference between animals and humans, the difference is only quantitative. It may be the case that the theists actually find this fact rather difficult to stomach, but that would be a psychological issue not a philosophical or scientific one.

And how does this relate to whether or not we have discovered 'non natural' things?

If you accept intelligence as a brute fact of the universe, you don't necessarily need an intelligence to explain emergence of intelligence in a particular corner of the universe. But that doesn't preclude an intervening intelligence either. Intelligent machine life may emerge or be created as a direct result of our own intellect. I suspect that in the end, most intelligence in the universe will be the product of other intelligences.

Now where naturalistics explainations, where observation fails, is in the origin of our own universe. How did this emergent complex system we call the universe come into being? We don't know. You can't presume that its orgin is naturalistic because everything else has naturalistics orgins as well. That conclusion is false because everything else doesn't have naturalistic origins. Some things are the creations of intelligence. Your response to my post doesn't have a naturalistic explaination...it was created by you an intelligent being.

I think that reality is a lot greater than just this universe...but I think that reality is similiar to our universe. Similiar in the sense that it will contain intellect, rationality, and consciousness as brute facts. There is no reason to think that in the reality outside this universe, there isn't intellect, rationality, and consciousness. If fact there is strong reason to believe those things exist in the reality outside our universe because from what we can observe about reality is it is often self-similar.

Now given all that, I think it is silly for a person who has thought deeply about reality to reject the notion of God.

Same thing goes for people who say it's God's doing. Go figure.

Are you saying animals don't have the ability to navigate reality or understand things? Awareness maybe not so much, but that's just due to the nature of their language/communication (imo).

God and Nature could be the same. Then again, maybe one exists and the other doesn't. I'll go with the simpler, less faith and servitude-requiring option.. nature is at work (and God isn't).


Theists can cling to their one book and as time goes on, I'll have my choice from many. As our world changes, so does science (and our opinions). Theists' opinions only change when the church says so.

Do you agree that most atheist make the same error that you accuse theists of making?


No......animals have intellect, not just as much as humans. I would not be surprised if in my lifetime we come across or make beings with intelligence that exceeds that of humans.


I'm suggesting that you look at "God" and "Nature" differently. That you instead think about "the creative and controlling force in the universe" and consider the question could there be intellect behind that creative/controlling force? It seems atheists are afraid to ask such questions.


You sicko

Even non naturalistic/non scientific ways are based on observation too. Really its all we got.

This is good. In more philosophical parlance, as Nietzsche argued some time ago, Nature "as seen from inside" (see his "Beyond Good and Evil" for the further implications of this phrase) is "will to power and nothing besides" (that is a chaotic display of energy is reality as we know it).

Stu's point is deeper though: He basically says that we do not have an understanding of nature "as seen from outside", so to speak. In other words, we cannot rule out the possibility that this very reality (i.e nature) is in fact a complex design that is structured so that "intelligence" and "consciousness" emerges out of it.

Conceptualized in this way, I think he is essentially correct in positing the metaphysical possibility of "God" (notice that this "God" does not have much resemblance to the theistic conceptualizations of a "personal God" etc.) as a fundamental alternative. He is also correct in stating that the philosophical mistake done by the atheists is similar to the mistake done by the theists, i.e, they rather carelessly conflate ontology with metaphysics.

A rather mundane objection to Stu's God (which I am not willing to pursue here, by the way) is that this "God" would be rather irrelevant to our, necessarily human, understanding of reality which would forever remain "from the inside."

Cheers and thanks for the insights.

Good. I do not have any significant objections to this conceptualization of nature and/or God.

Replied in quote^

I pretty much agree with stu on that. Only i wouldn't want to rank one over the other because idk if designed nature or natural nature is more likely. Or if those are the only options and my ape mind just comprehend others.

I see. I think that is fair enough.
Cheers