Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!godot!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Logic based on different sets of assumptions (part 2 of 2) Message-ID: <390@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 13:10:14 EST Article-I.D.: cybvax0.390 Posted: Wed Mar 6 13:10:14 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 20:10:41 EST References: <589@pyuxd.UUCP> <4898@cbscc.UUCP> <4899@cbscc.UUCP> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 40 Summary: I will now present to you Paul's finest achievement: Scientific Godism. It's just like (surprise) Scientific Creationism. In article <4899@cbscc.UUCP> pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) writes: > Here is where I think your argument gets off on the wrong tack. 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. > > I think that your example only appears to be less presumptive on your part. > You haven't removed the "deity" you have only renamed it "natural flow". > Show me the same evidence for the existence of natural flow (and it's > performance of the functions you claim for it) that you want for > the existence of God... See? Just as belief in creation is a Theory, so belief in the christian god is a Proposition. :-( And he does it with a little miracle called deification. When Rich lumps together the unknown driving principles of the universe under the term "natural flow", Paul leaps up and says "prove it exists, and if you can't then leave me and my god alone." The dishonest thing about all this is that here is where Occam's razor should properly be applied, not as in all the places in the previous note where Paul tried to misapply it. Paul overlooks the Allah proposition, the Buddha proposition, the Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva proposition and a zillion others just like his. What all those "propositions" have in common, is an assumption of one or more deities. These "propositions" all share the "natural flow" with the scientific viewpoint. Things happen-- that is natural flow. These "propositions" just use a diety to power or direct the happenings. Thus, the diety is an excess assumption. It may exist, but it gives no more explanatory power. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh