Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Logic based on different sets of assumptions (part 2 of 2) Message-ID: <647@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Mon, 11-Mar-85 10:06:22 EST Article-I.D.: pyuxd.647 Posted: Mon Mar 11 10:06:22 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 12-Mar-85 09:09:16 EST References: <589@pyuxd.UUCP>, <4932@cbscc.UUCP> <4933@cbscc.UUCP> <1080@utastro.UUCP> Organization: Huxley College Lines: 31 >> [DUBUC] ... You conlude >>that belief that there is a God to be an assumption. There is another >>possibility: It is a proposition held to explain questions (often metaphyical) >>that we encounter about our own existence and that of the world we live in. >>In this sense I do not take God's existence to be axiomatic. I offer it as a >>consistent explanation of the world as I encounter it. It may not be the >>only one, but as far as *I* know it is the best for many things I consider. > This is just a way of defining away things that you can't understand. The > problem with this approach is that it contributes nothing to your > understanding of the world around you. It fails to distinguish in quality > between explanations such as a) the pot boils because it is on the stove, > and, b) God made the water boil. The first is repeatable, the second > relies on God's whim. [PADRAIG] I think the religious point of view is that both views have equal potential validity, but they choose the latter. However, when such people make claims about the possibility of a deity's whim controlling the universe, they would throw out the evidence of regularity and repeatability that we DO find. Even if there indeed IS a god, which we probably will never know, it would appear that, if this god did create the universe (rather than being just a consciousness within it), it designed it with "automatic mode" in mind: if it had to constantly break in and fine tune, it wouldn't have done a very good design job. Yet some people, to support beliefs that they hold that are without real evidence, choose to say "well, it COULD have been a direct interference from the will of god projected into the universe" without first 1) examining the veracity of their own claims and 2) showing such an example of interference. -- "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I dunno." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr