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From: stirling@fortune.UUCP (Patrick Stirling)
Newsgroups: talk.religion,net.origins
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Argument
Message-ID: <6011@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Aug-86 20:01:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: fortune.6011
Posted: Thu Aug 14 20:01:52 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Aug-86 02:15:04 EDT
References: <15222@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: stirling@fortune.UUCP (Patrick stirling)
Organization: Fortune Systems, Belmont, CA
Lines: 28
Xref: linus talk.religion:12 net.origins:3369

I'm following up from talk.religion, so apologies if this has already been
discussed in net.origins!
Regarding this discussion, I have two questions:
1. What is 'existence'?
   The best answer I can think of is "some kind of perturbation in some
   kind of energy field" whch sounds rather vague. A more practical answer
   might be "something exists if it is perceived by a normal person" 
   (limiting my argument to humans on purpose). This give rise to the
   question "What's normal", which I can't answer, and also to fact that 
   (in my opinion) it's possible for one person to perceive something
   that most people don't perceive, AND for the thing to exist.
2. Why does anything need a reason to exist?
   This reminds me of a piece in my local sunday paper (the SF Ex-Chron)
   recently, stating that "the house fly is totally useless to humans - 
   there is no known reason for its existence"! The colossal egocentricity
   of this took my breath away!
Any comments on these questions or their relation to the discussion are
looked forward to!

patrick
{ihnp4, hplabs, amdcad, ucbvax!dual}!fortune!stirling
He thought he saw a rattlesnake
That questioned him in greek;
He looked again, and saw it was
The middle of next week.
"The one thing I regret", he said,
"Is that it cannot speak"
Lweis Carrol, Sylvie and Bruno.