Keith

Or perhaps something outside of nature is doing the decision-making.

Keith

Starboy

"Why is the goal survival?"

That is an easy one. If it weren’t our goal we would not be here to discuss it. It does beg the question, how did it come to be that our goal is survival. Again, another easy one, it came about by pure chance. If you wait long enough, anything that is not forbidden in nature is mandatory.

Starboy

John Page

Starboy sum it up succinctly. BTW "Nature" is not a sentient entity - its "how things are".

excreationist

I believe that the universe has multiple alternative histories, and it was inevitable that life would appear in many of those alternative histories.
Anyway who said nature "decided" to make something living and complicated... do you think during the big bang, nature was sitting around and thought "I think I'll make some life in several billion years, and eventually make it become intelligent" ?

Like some kind of creator god... well that god seems pretty sadistic. Another possibility is that chance was involved in the formation of life... there are huge numbers of stars (billions upon billions of them?) and we know that many have planets... even if the universe only had one history there would be a lot of room for life to appear by chance.

Amos

Are you baiting me here?

How about intelligent design within nature!

Amos

No, it is how we perceive things are because nature is not and survival is real or things would not change. (is that still English?)

Keith

If I understand you, you're essentially saying that given enough time, a monkey sitting at a computer will eventually type an exact copy of this year's London phone book....if a monkey could live long enough, that is.

Keith

Amos

We would sure be able to find a watch by that time.

excreationist

The probability that it would do it would approach 100% but not quite reach 100%... That's similar to how the chance of getting at least one head on a coin becomes more likely over time... in one toss, the chance of having no heads is 50%, in two tosses, the chance of having no heads is 25%, in three tosses, the chance of having no heads is 12.5% - which means in three tosses, the chance of having at least one head is 87.5%. Over time this probability would approach 100% but never quite reach it. (it would be like 99.999999999999999999999%)

Keith

That's my point! Nature couldn't be self-designing and self-purposeful could it? Unless "nature" is a person, which doesn't seem very likely to me. How do you explain the personality reflected by the purposefulness of nature?

Keith