What I found interesting is that Towne could recognize a 'fantastic postulate' wrt the universe, yet overlooked the same 'fantastic postulate' wrt evolution. It was a fascinating insight into the inconsistencies of his beliefs."
"Darwinists are fond of reminding us that evolution theory is not an origin of life theory. Granted, this is true."
That's a modern-day cop-out born out of necessity. It was not always so. Early Darwinists loved the 'primordial ooze' concept that supposedly generated life spontaneously. As the evidence for abiogenesis receded into the distance, the paradigm was changed to exclude abiogenesis from 'evolution'. Ask them this, at what point did molcules begin 'evolving' [changing]? Before they became alive or after? They can hardly argue after because then they need a fully-functional cell to self-assemble. Obviously, some evolutionary 'change' had to be occurring before life appeared and methinks they protesteth too much.
"But James strongly argues that in the mind/brain relation, the entire consciousness is "indivisible" -- not "quantizeable" -- and coextensive with the entire current brain state, not just individual brains cells or any combination of them."
"I dunno. To me it seems that saying consciousness is the ultimate product of primordial cells as it expresses via evolution is just to say we aren't going to deal with consciousness; because it, like the origin of life, is just too difficult a problem."
That's pretty weak, but so is the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP)and that has become so accepted that most people don't even remember that there used to be a Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP). The WAP being that the universe looks designed for life because only a universe with that complement of physical laws could generate life to observe it [necessitating an infinite number of universes model so that you can conceive the belief that it is possible to get one like ours randomly] while the SAP says that the universe looks designed for life because it is.
You can bet that they are working on a more acceptable way to explain-away that little consciousness problem. James may have it with his little 'not quantizable' argument. Anything that gives them enough wiggle room to 'conceive the belief' that evolution can accomodate the inconsistent evidence.
Hi GourmetDan! Great post!
WRT to the above caption: To my way of thinking, the WAP is a cavil and a cop-out -- a rationalization to explain the universe without reference to a beginning in space and time, presumably caused by a divine creator. So we postulate multiworlds and infinite numbers of universes -- which is such a joke, because nobody has ever observed any of them nor is ever likely to, making the WAP completely impervious to actual scientific analysis.
So give me the SAP -- and give it to me full strength!!!! LOLOL!
Thanks so very much for your excellent essay/post!