Wayne,
Thank you for the response.
I see several problems in this discussion. The first is dualism.
We tend to see things are natural or unnatural. However when people build unnatural machines called airplanes for flying, but they use natural laws and materials from nature to build them. Thus airplanes are a combination of both natural and unnatural.
Thought and rationality is taken to be the difference between nature and unnatural. This is the distinction that Monod made between the subjective and the objective. However we find that other animals besides humans show evidence of thinking and learning. Thus the distinction which Monod made and has been used in evolutionary thinking is not based on fact. Natural beings which includes humans can think and act with purpose.
I never said all events unfold by chance and magic. I was specifically talking about the PROBABILITY of events happening, not how those events (your birth, earth’s trip around the sun etc) unfolded.
The question is not probability, but the rational explanation of why and how things happen. If we have the choice between chance and a rational cause, we need to go with the rational cause. The problem is that Monod has said that there is no rational cause behind the universe, so nature is innately without meaning and purpose.
Last week I was surprised and delighted to see a large flock of robins, about 20, outside my house on a snowy day. Were they there by chance? Maybe, but after some careful observation I noticed that their movement was centered around a wild cherry tree that still had fruit on it. They had gathered to eat in the middle of winter. [Please note that Dawkins denies that animals have this type of rational ability.]
Again one looks at a given situation and determines from the facts, what are its most probable causes. The question is not whether it was necessary, but did it have a rational probable cause. If natural events have a rational cause, it follows that nature was designed by a rational being.
If course you can deny that logic as others have. You can say that the universe is not rationally structured or that rational structure can be produced by chance. Neither of which is logical or scientific.
[quote=“Wayne, post:4, topic:158”]
However, it is much more likely that life is tuned to the universe rather than the other way around.
[/quote] [a quotation from Krause]
I would agree that life is tuned to the universe, because that is the ecological position, as opposed to Dawkins’ position of gene-centered evolution. However this assumes that life and the universe are two different things. Life is part of the universe. Life which is non-material is part of the universe which is more than the material.
Science wants to separate the natural/physical from the unnatural/rational, which cannot be done. The rational is built into the universe through its laws. The rational developed from the universe in the evolution of thinking, feeling creatures. The spiritual developed from the universe as humans evolved as rational and moral beings.
This is an assertion without basis. It is one thing to say that historical events could have turned out differently, which most people would agree with, and another thing to say that the universe could have taken a different basic form.
In any case what we have now from the best evidence available is a rationally structured purposeful universe that is our home and our responsibility. This science vs faith debate appears to be an effort to avoid this basic reality.