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From: beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Absence of Thought
Message-ID: <967@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 20:05:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.967
Posted: Mon Aug 12 20:05:20 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 21:53:14 EDT
References: <890@oddjob.UUCP>, <376@scgvaxd.UUCP>
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 90


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>>>,> = Dan Boskovich; >> = Matt Crawford

>>> Wrong! My conclusion was this: Since there is nothing in the present
>>> structure of natural law that can account for its own origin, the Universe
>>> could not have created itself. Therefore, it must have had a supernatural
>>> origin.
>
>>Now Dan might mean one of two things by this, depending on how you
>>interpret his phrase "present structure of natural law".  He could
>>be saying that because we do not yet know a scientific cause for
>>the the existence of the universe, there cannot be a scientific
>>cause.  Or he could mean that he knows somehow that the laws of
>>nature forbid the spontaneous origination of a universe.  Either
>>way, he's wrong.  Dare I go into the reasons?  If I don't I will
>
> Or, I could be saying that since we DO NOT KNOW of any way NOTHING
> could have become SOMETHING through NATURAL PROCESSES, it is at least
> AS REASONABLE to conclude that "supernatural processes were the
> cause of origin" as it is to conclude that "we will someday discover
> the natural cause of origin"!!
>
> And, I might add that it is equally UNscientific and biased to rule
> out either _a priori_. So why shouldn't both be considered a valid
> hypothesis.

(Why is it that you creationists are completely incapable of grasping
 the notion that there are qualitative differences between "natural"
 and "supernatural"?  I'll try to demonstrate this patiently:)

Would you consider the hypothesis "whenever you let go of something, god
makes it fall" to be scientific?  I sincerely hope not.  But it does,
after all, explain why everything up til now has fallen.  So why isn't it
scientific?  Ten to one your first reaction is to say "because everybody
knows gravity makes things fall".  But the reason it's unscientific is
*not* that an alternate natural explanation exists.  It's unscientific
because, not only does it have no application to any Other area, it can't
even predict whether or not things will continue to fall.  As many crea-
tionists have pointed out, we simply *can't* predict what a supernatural
being will do, and we can't know whether or not s/he'll keep it up (so to
speak :-) ).

Now this example is obviously unscientific, because there *is* an alter-
native, scientific explanation that *not only* explains why everything up
til now has fallen, *not only* predicts (with success) that things will
continue to fall, it *also* explains a host of other neat things (like
orbits and stuff).  (For those of you on the edge of your seats wondering
what theory it is, I'm talking about gravity. :-)  But the point here is
that the existence of an alternate, natural explanation has no impact on
the actual quality of the supernatural explanation.  It only serves as
something to compare the latter to.  The fact that alternate explanations
*do* exist has no bearing on the validity of supernatural explanations,
and the fact that they don't currently exist doesn't either.  After all,
"whenever you let go of something, god makes it fall" wasn't any more
scientific *before* Newton than it is now.  With or without natural
explanations, supernatural explanations are just plain bad science.

"But," you may say, "at least until natural explanations come along,
supernatural ones are better than nothing."  But think about that.  Are
they really?  What do they buy us?  They may explain how things actually
are.  But do they say anything at all about how things will be?  And do
they lead us to new and useful discoveries about other things?  I believe
(although (it should go without saying) I could be wrong) that genetics
was spawned by an attempt to determine how individuals passed on their
"relative advantages" according to the theory of natural selection.
Certainly a host of archeological milestones are directly attributable to
attempts to verify(/disprove) evolutionary theory.  And by acknowledging
the genetic relatedness between humans and other creatures, drugs can be
more effectively tested without risking human lives, and hence are just
lots and lots safer when they do hit the market.  The list goes on.  Now
creation theory has been around a heck of a lot longer than evolutionary
theory.  In the long absence of the alternate, natural explanation, what
scientific benefits did the supernatural one offer?  On what basis would
you claim that "supernatural explanations are better than nothing"?  Or,
if you say I've built a strawman and you *don't* claim that, on what
basis would you claim that they're better than (or even "at least as good
as") the natural ones that do exist?  And if you don't claim either, then
what the h*ll are posting to net.origins for?

	       [This blank line, however, was an accident]
-- 

--JB       (Beth Christy, U. of Chicago, ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth)

		"Oh yeah, P.S.,
		 I, I feel, feel like, I am
		 in a burning building
		 And I gotta go."            (Laurie Anderson)