Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site oliveb.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!pesnta!hplabs!oliveb!long From: long@oliveb.UUCP (Dave Long) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: For Peter Crames Message-ID: <263@oliveb.UUCP> Date: Tue, 19-Feb-85 20:24:35 EST Article-I.D.: oliveb.263 Posted: Tue Feb 19 20:24:35 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 20-Feb-85 06:45:33 EST References: Reply-To: long@oliveb.UUCP (Dave Long) Organization: D&L U., Thaumaturgy Lines: 35 Summary: In article hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.ARPA (Ernest Hua) writes: | > Here is why I believe God exists ... | > | > My body, including my brain, is a machine. A machine can't cause | > itself to move (or think, in the case of the brain). A machine | > needs an outside agent to cause it to move. Since I can't cause | > my own thoughts or actions, my thoughts and actions must be caused | > by an outside agent. That outside agent must be God, who must cause | > all thoughts and actions as a result of Her/His First Cause or Big | > Bang. God is a programmer, and the universe is a computer. | > | > If you understand this, re-read this message substituting words | > as follows: my -> your | > I -> you | > God -> I or Me | > | > Peter Crames ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!ptc | [A bunch of arguments that support what Peter Crames has written, but ar- gued as though the author did not understand Crames' intent] | | I do not understand your substitutions. The last one would introduce a lot | of incorrect grammatic constructions, rendering some sentences confusing at | best. Please explain. What Mr. Crames was doing was to start his article with a fairly typical creationist argument, then showing how silly the entire argument was by prov- iding the mechanism for making substitutions which did not change the (il)lo- gical structure of the argument to any great extent, but did trivialize the entire (ir)rationality of the argument. Sorry about posting this, but I felt that if one person did not fully un- derstand Crames' message, others might not have also, and I don't like seeing any people argue when they are both trying to say the same thing. Dave Long