Hi Steve, You may be right. But I prefer the explanation of how the world came to be and how it works in an orderly way as offered by Paul Davies, a physicist:
"The universe looks as if it is unfolding according to some plan or blueprint. The input is the cosmic initial conditions, and the output is organized complexity, or depth. The essential feature is that something of value emerges as the result of processing according to some ingenious pre-existing set of rules. These rules look as if they are the product of intelligent design. My own inclination is to suppose that qualities such as ingenuity, economy, beauty, and so on have a genuine transcendent reality -- they are not merely the product of human experience -- and that these qualities are reflected in the structure of the natural world." -- from "The Mind of God,." p.214. Note how Davies' thought parallels Pirsig's in saying "The essential feature is that something of value emerges . . ." DQ at work perhaps? I think so. Best, Platt On 26 Oct 2010 at 7:50, Steven Peterson wrote: Hi Platt, On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 4:12 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Let's up our game to scientific evidence, guys. A basic article of scientific > faith is that there exists an orderly world to be discovered according to > intelligently created and applied mathematical principles. Science offers > empirical evidence of such intelligent order. That such arose by chance is > less > believable than Christ rose from the dead. Steve: This is an idea I hear a lot from Christian apologists (that theism deserves the credit for science since the idea of a Creator is what motivated the creation of science since such a deity suggests that the universe would be governed by orderly laws), but it never made sense to me. If there is such a being, the world would not need to have rational explanations. I would expect it to be more like a cartoon where laws need not be apparent or consistent. Dissecting Adam and Eve, instead of finding mechanisms that explain functions, you could discover that their bodies are hollow shells animated by unknown and undiscoverable forces. It seems to me that if there were such a God it would suggest not "an orderly world to be discovered according to intelligently created and applied mathematical principles" but a world whose workings are as unknowable and ungraspable by mere human intellect just as God is supposed to be. This sort of thinking rather than scientific thinking is what motivated the pope to tell scientists that they should study the big bang but should not try to study what may have happened before the big bang. It is what motivates ID proponents whose so-called theory amounts to saying that there are things that science will never explain. It is an unexplainable world rather than a rational one that is suggested by a creative deity whose power is not thought to be merely necessary to get the universe going but also to sustain it. This deity was left homeless after Galileo and unemployed after Newton and Darwin. New conceptions of the divine are now necessary to sustain religion in a world that is sustained without a anthropomorphic super deity. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
