Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!spar!ellis
From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.sci,net.religion,net.origins
Subject: Re: Does the moon exist?
Message-ID: <163@spar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 18:05:04 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.163
Posted: Thu Mar 27 18:05:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 05:47:18 EST
References: <12628@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Artificial Research, CA
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.philosophy:4746 net.sci:657 net.religion:9796 net.origins:2991

>Metaphysical questions about which came first abound.  If you want to reject
>this time loop, you must then follow Bishop G Berkeley's argument and
>conclude that there is an Observer that gives existence to the Universe: no
>Observer, no wave-function collapse.  Wheeler says this Observer is all of
>us.  Rather fortunate then, that we came into existence, so as to give
>existence to the rest of the Universe.  Before this century, quasars did not
>exist, since no one observed them.  Taken literally, this is roughly the
>view that Creationists take about quasars: God created the Universe 10000
>years ago, with light from the quasars also on the way.

     Those who prefer to believe in an objective, independently existing,
     10-15 billion year old Rosenesque universe have another option -- to
     postulate a Cosmic Observer who has been there since the beginning of
     time, to assure the existence of everything during those periods of our
     not-looking.

-michael

     Spinoza should be credited with a certain wisdom worthy of imitation.
     Attributing the name "God" to independent reality strongly marks
     the difference between that reality and the purely phenomenal reality,
     and this is quite in agreement, as we saw, with the teaching of
     modern physics... Spinoza's use of the word God to denote Being..
     is the most direct procedure for comprehensibly expressing the idea
     that Being is not blind mechanics. 

- Bernard d'Espagnat (In Search of Reality, Springer-Verlag, 1983)