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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Science as Religion (other objections to Wingate's article)
Message-ID: <259@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Nov-84 22:30:04 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.259
Posted: Sun Nov 11 22:30:04 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Nov-84 08:20:09 EST
References: <704@umcp-cs.UUCP> <209@cybvax0.UUCP> <770@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 45

> In article <209@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
> > Charlie, your first sentence only demonstrates that Rich may have a
> > religion with no gods.  It does not demonstrate that Rich has a religion.
> 
> Fair enough.  Let me attempt to distiguish between the use of science and
> the practice of science as a religion.  Science assumes that the universe
> always follows the same pattern of action, whatever that may be, and attempts
> to MODEL that pattern.  To say that there cannot be a God, outside of the
> universe, who intervenes and causes the pattern to be disrupted, is
> science as a religion.

It appears that you know little about cosmology and how scientists speculate
and evaluate possibilities about the early moments of the universe.  (I take
that back:  *I* know little about cosmology, so I guess you know even less
than that.)  To say that there simply IS a god, based solely on the assumption
that you would like for there to be one, is a ridiculous position.  As 
ridiculous (no, more so) than assuming that there isn't one.  I say "more so"
because it is arguably less ridiculous to take the more feasible possibility
by Occam.

> If I am told by
> someone that their brother rose from the dead last night, is not the
> simplest theory that he did in fact do so?  The evaluation that one would
> normally make would be that the event is "too unlikely"; but how unlikely
> IS too unlikely?  One makes a highly subjective evaluation.

The "highly subjective evaluation" is the one that assumes the unlikely
for no apparent reason.  Simply because one assumes the conclusion, one
accepts unreliable evidence as "proof", one "evaluates" by assuming what one
wants to believe.  And believing that THAT is a basis for making evaluative
decisions about reality is preposterous.

> I have a copy of _Why I am Not a Christian_, and I don't find it the least
> convincing.  Most of his arguments are the same old discredited arguments
> we've all heard years before, and he doesn't seem to realize that if God
> sticks his hand into the universe and makes a change in the material
> universe, that the assumption that is the very foundation of science, that
> the universe always operates in the same fashion, is violated.

By "discredited", you apparently mean "ignored".
-- 
WHAT IS YOUR NAME?			Rich Rosen
WHAT IS YOUR NET ADDRESS?		pyuxd!rlr
WHAT IS THE CAPITAL OF ASSYRIA?		Nineveh    (GOTCHA!)
ALL RIGHT, OFF YOU GO...