Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sphinx.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!lll-crg!dual!qantel!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth 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 [This line intentionally left blank] >>>,> = 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)