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A respectful discussion with a physicalist
One of the greatest benefits and joys of writing on Medium is the exchange of ideas with intelligent and respectful commenters. George Faulkner responded to my post on AI and the kalam cosmological argument and it became obvious that we did not share the same views on the big questions of the universe, consciousness, life and where it all came from.
His somewhat lengthy comments called for a response, but one that I knew would be too long for the response section. So, here are his comments and my responses in post form.
On the multiverse and spacetime
The idea that the unimaginably vast universe we inhabit is one of possibly an infinite number of such universes has gained great traction within the scientific and philosophical communities. There is good reason for it as the evidence of the origin of the universe 13.8 billion years ago with the entire universe emerging from essentially nothing provided a scientific basis for a creation event. That’s disturbing to physicalists. Further, the fine-tuning of our universe which involves an impossibly large number of interrelated coincidences, can only be explained by chance or design. If chance is the option, then it requires an extremely large (infinite?) number of chances to provide one with the goldilocks characteristics intelligent life requires. This…
