Agnostic Skepticism- My Views

[bennyboy]

I'm sorry for such a late reply.

Richard Dawkins made a good point about the idea of the universe being God/sentient. The gist of it is that many people confuse the things that are in the universe being alive for the universe in whole being alive, and yes, while I agree that we cannot know for sure, I have to say it's a bit presumptuous and strange to say that the universe, all combining together, forms one God. I don't dismiss the idea, however, but there's a big difference between factors of the universe being alive and the universe being alive. Except for that, I completely agree.

I like Dawkins, and I enjoy seeing him eat theists for breakfast, but I think this is a logic fail. 99.999999% of a human is empty space. Would you then say the HUMAN isn't alive, it is just the neurons inside him which are alive? No, that doesn't work, either, because the neurons themselves are 99.9999999% empty space, too. So, for that matter, are all the atoms in the neurons.

It's kind of paradoxical, really-- there's nothing that humans are made up of that can knowingly be said to be life/alive, and yet here we are-- living out our days with intent, and sense of purpose, and a rich subjective experience of our actions and their consequences.

So yeah, I'd say that if much/most of the stuff IN the universe is acting in a particular coherent way, then one could reasonably define the Universe as being alive. I'm not saying that's the case-- just that deconstruction doesn't work for ANY living thing, and so applying it to the Universe-as-God idea doesn't really prove anything.