Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!decvax!genrad!wjh12!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Science as Religion (other objections to Wingate's article) Message-ID: <1114@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Wed, 14-Nov-84 19:49:27 EST Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1114 Posted: Wed Nov 14 19:49:27 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 17-Nov-84 07:55:41 EST References: <704@umcp-cs.UUCP> <209@cybvax0.UUCP> <770@umcp-cs.UUCP> <259@pyuxd.UUCP> Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 67 It appears it is about time for me to bow out of this argument, judging from Rich Rosen's lastest missive: > 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. This statement is so full of incorrect assumptions about my position and motivations that it's hard to know where to start. First of all, one can obviously distiguish between scientific cosmology and the regualr flavor. Scientific cosmology has proceed under the limitation that using its techniques, we can never really know what started the universe. A very clever god could arrange everything so that we would never know he was there. That's O.K. in science because we don't care. In religion, we do. Secondly, since I have never explained how I justify my belief in christianity, where does Rich get his statement that I assume God's existence solely on the basis that I would like there to be one? How does he know? Sounds to me like he assumed that I would like God to exist, and decided that such a desire would irreparably prejudice me. Why don't we argue this as if we actually believed in our arguments? As for feasibility, Occam's razor isn't even remotely concerned with this. Occam's razor gives us simplicity; we get truth from other sources. Occam's razor only comes into play once we have a) agreed that both our explanations adequately explain the data, and b) agreed that we don't care which explanation is deemed correct. Once we have gotten to question (a), all our explanations are feasible. >> 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". I can only understand by this statement that Rich Rosen is utterly ignorant of the history of christian theology. All the arguments he has brought up are very old; people were arguing about most of the in the middle ages. I can't see how he could seriously claim that these arguments have been ignored if he had ever actually read the traditional replies. I can't deny that a lot of the traditional responses are wrong; but those of us who actually read christian philosophical works are acutely aware that they haven't been ignored. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est.