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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: So simple, even a creationist can understand! (are you kidding?)
Message-ID: <1240@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Jul-85 20:18:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1240
Posted: Thu Jul 18 20:18:29 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 07:47:51 EDT
References: <1290@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 38

>>>>You can go pretty far, with enough trials. [TOREK?]

>>> Have there been enough yet?  Why, of course, we've gotten pretty far
>>> haven't we?  :-)  [DUBUC]1

>> A creationist WOULD put a smiley on the end of a perfectly good statement
>> like that, wouldn't he?  (Think about this Paul:  we've come this
>> far precisely because we've had enought trials; enough to come as far
>> as we have. [ROSEN]

> Can you say "beg the question"?  Good, I knew you could.
> Hence, the smiley. [DUBOIS]

When you ask a question that begs it own answer, phrased in such a way as to
offer only its own assumed answer.  It's really very simple.  In this universe,
with these physical laws, over this past n periods of time, so much has
happened, enough to (wow!) get us where we are today.  To ask "why" this
happened is to ASSUME that someONE or someTHING deliberately caused it all
to happen.

"[Hawking thinks that] the only way to explain our universe is by our presence
in it.  This principle can be paraphrased as 'Things are as they are because
we are.'  According to one version, there is a large number of different and
separate universes.  Each has different values for its physical parameters 
and for its initial conditions.  Most will not have the right conditions for
the development of intelligent life.  However, in a small number there will be
conditioned and parameters as in our universe.  In those it will be possible
for intelligent life to develop and ask the question 'Why is the universe as
we observe it?'  The only answer will be that if it were otherwise, there would
be nobody to ask the question."   ---Stephen Hawking as quoted in "Stephen
					Hawking's Universe" by John Boslough

Now, who's begging what?  (I sometimes wonder if creationists could ever think
of the universe in this way.  So simple a child could understand it, but
a creationist, well..... :-?  )
-- 
"Wait a minute.  '*WE*' decided???   *MY* best interests????"
					Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr