If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

Note that in none of this have I claimed that anything, including qualia, is independent of the natural universe. I'm saying that since the capacity for the subjective is intrinsic to the universe, and since it has no bearing at all on our understanding of any physical mechanism, a purely physical model is an insufficient description of reality.

Why word it like that? Of course the capacity for subjective experience is in the universe. Where else could it be.

It could be nonexistent, and that it is not is significant. It's one thing to evolve the ability to perceive, or to form perceptions into specific kinds of qualia involving shapes, colors, sounds, etc. We treat the universe as mechanical-- it is composed of four fundamental forces interacting through the medium of energy and matter (if there's any sense distinguishing it as different from energy anymore). This understanding involves the movement through space and time of that energy (and/or matter), and none of this either explains or predicts qualia-- except if qualia is redefined in terms of physical correlates.

But this way of putting it suggests that it is spread uniformly like space, time or ether.

This implication wasn't my intent.

It also suggests that it does not owe its existence to the necessary conditions of the physical world

The intended implication is that since qualia are part of the natural world, there's no "special sauce." And since qualia are incidental to our mechanical understanding of the natural world, that mechanical understanding is insufficient in a very important way.