[extropy-chat] Re: Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[Gennady Ra]

Kurt Schoedel  wrote
>The problem, of course, 
> is that the designer itself is an example of an
> irriducibly complex 
> system that the designer itself had to have been
> designed by another 
> designer, and so on. this is an example of an
> infinite recursion. 

and

Trend Ologist wrote:
>A possibility that comes again & again to me is that the Designer is perhaps 
>not intelligent. The Designer could be like an engineering student who 
>partied too much, then later designs faulty products and systems.

It reminded me of a great essay by Borges, The Vindication of 
pseudo-Basilides (Una vindicacion del falso Basilides, from his book 
Discusion published in 1932). To quote it in English, I tried to find a 
translation on the Net and failed. Instead I was linked by Google to a site 
(Gnostic Friends Network -- "a virulent anti-Christian outpouring") and a 
page with title: Basilides, Tertullian, 365 heavens, Borges, 
self-reproducing inflationary universe, anthropic principle. There was not 
Borges but there was Basilides.

Basilides is a gnostic theologian who thought that:

     the  first  beings  of  all had been the aeons, invisible deities   who  
dwell  in  the  Pleroma  (the  secret  gnostic light-heaven).  In the heart 
of the Pleroma lived the "Unborn Father,"  a being of such pure and infinite 
perfection it was impossible to describe or even contemplate.

Creation began when one of the aeons accidentally created the  "Rulers,"  
powerful angels who fell from the Pleroma and built  a  first  heaven  
underneath  it. These angels created another  heaven  beneath  them, 
populated by yet more Rulers; creation  proceeded  apace until soon there 
were 365 heavens, one inside the other, each succeeding layer filled with 
beings completely unaware of all those above them.

The  Rulers  who  control the lowest heaven (the one most Christians  know  
about) made the Earth and everything on it; their leader Yahweh impersonates 
"God" in the Old Testament.
===========

That is, the Creator of our Universe (or, at least, the Master of this 
Civilization) is the farthest from the pure Light of Pleroma and the most 
vicious demiurge of all creators. As Borges wrote in the essay (in my humble 
translation from Russian translation):
    
What is important for us is the common idea of these stories: We are 
uncareful or felonious lapse, a fruit of interaction of defective god and 
churlish, ungrateful material.

Best!

Gennady
Simferopol Crimea Ukraine