DanArmak comments on Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It) - Less Wrong

32 Post author: ciphergoth 30 October 2010 09:31AM

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Comment author: DanArmak 07 November 2010 05:28:11PM 4 points [-]

For this reason, I have never been all that impressed by the "refutation" of the first cause argument; the refutation being that it supposedly requires a complex "first cause" God, Who is Himself in need of explanation. God could conceivably have been simple (as simple as a Big Bang, anyways) and then developed (some people would prefer to say "evolved") under His own internal dynamics into something much more complex. Just as we atheists claim happened to the physical universe.

Adapted refutation: if you're going to suppose a complex God evolving from a simpler one and then acting on the universe, it is simpler to suppose a complex universe evolving from a simple one. The refutation still holds based on Occam's razor.

Comment author: Perplexed 07 November 2010 05:33:16PM 1 point [-]

Good point. Agreed.