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Reply #133: Theism v Platonism [View All]

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Stunster Donating Member (984 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-13-05 07:43 PM
Response to Reply #132
133. Theism v Platonism
One explanation is essentially Platonic. This says that the universe/multiverse-generating equations or cosmic computer code are logically necessary, eternal, and necessarily unique, and necessarily self-instantiating.

The other explanation is theistic---there's a transcendent mind.

Since we only know of Platonic mathematical entities as being essentially things that can be comprehended by minds, and we only ever encounter them as being the contents of minds, and we never see Platonic entities being causally efficacious in the absence of minds, and we are familiar with minds being causally efficacious (we decide to lift our arm, and up it goes), and since all the computer code we know of ultimately flows from the conscious minds of programmers, it seems a more reasonable and economic and elegant explanation to posit a transcendent Mind, whose contents include the universe/multiverse-generating equations/cosmic computer code.

There is simply nothing unreasonable about this abductive inference, relative to its competitors. Au contraire.

In addition to accounting for the mathematical design apparent in physical nature, theism also looks to be a more plausible abductive hypothesis when accounting for the data of moral experience, religious experience, aesthetic experience, as well as just the plain old existence of a world containing personhood (reason and consciousness), in general, compared to Platonism and materialism.

But let me think about your ideas a bit more, because I'm not sure I fully understand them yet.
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