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From: ln63fac@sdcc7.UUCP (Rick Frey)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.origins
Subject: Re: Unprovable ideas in science and God
Message-ID: <151@sdcc7.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 14:17:07 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc7.151
Posted: Mon Nov  4 14:17:07 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 05:13:28 EST
References: <2294@ukma.UUCP> <121@uscvax.UUCP> <139@sdcc7.UUCP> <155@uscvax.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 138
Keywords: Black holes, Creationism, Evolution
Xref: linus net.religion:7756 net.origins:2542
Summary: Astrology, Christianity and unprovability

In article <155@uscvax.UUCP>, kurtzman@uscvax.UUCP (Stephen Kurtzman) writes:

> >Here's where you start going off track.  Has no one who ever gotten into 
> >astrology gotten out of it because they realized it was rediculous?  People 
> >have left astrology and denied its truth and validity even after believing 
> >in it whole heartedly.
> 
> The question does not pertain to the history of a particular individual. The
> question is how are failed predictions treated by the practising astrologer?
> What theories are used to explain failed or accurate predictions? 

If the question doesn't pertain to the individual then why do you turn around 
and say that it is the individual, practising astrologer who must deal with
failed predictions?  If 'astrology' existed as something aside from the
people who pactised it (i.e. an external God or a provable set of laws that
operate regardless of the individual practitioners) then what you're saying
would make more sense.  But since astrology seems to be somewhat subjective,
you get back to individual people and then you are going to get into prior
experiences, individual tendencies and no simple generalization can
categorize what every practitioner of astrology will do.

> find that accurate predictions are touted as proof that astrology is valid
> and that failed predictions show the limitations of data or the astrologer.
> In other words, for the practising astrologer, nothing can falsify his
> subject.
> 
Fortunately that's just not true.  If people (again we're back to
individuals) could competely sell out to something like astrology than you
might be right, but people rarely whole-heartedly believe anything.  There's
always doubt and mistrust and these can be rationalized away in a myriad of
different ways.  To many things to rationalize or explain away and you get
disbelief (i.e. Santa Claus).
> 
> You are right. The problem is that much of Christianity is based on a
> concensus of belief by a number of chosen people. The Roman Catholics have
> the college of cardinals and the pope, many protestant sects have
> organizations for pastors and elected leaders, and some sects look to a single
> individual for spiritual truth such as the Moonies. Christianity has always
> been defined by what people that call themselves christian think and do.
> 
And very wrongly so.  Christianity if it is to live up to its title must be
based on what only Christ thought and did.  When the Church or men come in
and claim to be prophets or additional voices from God, you get a distortion
of what the Bible and what Christ said.  Granted I'm assuming that the Bible
is the word of God, but if it's not, then all religion is subject to the whim
of the group of people who are in power or the leader who can write the most
books and get them out to the followers.  That's the whole essence to why the
Bible is so crucial to Christianity.  If we can't say that that is the
authority, then we're left floating around with no anchor.
> 
> Nothing is wrong with starting with a premise as long as you do not give it
> some special status just because it is your premise. You should be just as
> willing to disprove (as well as prove) any hypothesis that results from the
> premise. In the case of creationism the premise is that the earth was created
> by God in a certain way and nothing can be said to disprove it. Creationists
> give their premise the special status of being true. In science every
> premise is ultimately challengable.
> 
That's a little unfair.  A great number of 'Creationists' have abandoned the
literal 7 days idea and have tried to understand how Genesis might fit in
with evolution.  Hebrew scholars have shown that the word used for day was
alternately used for period of time throughout the Old Testament.  While it
might come slowly (if it has to come at all) Christian scientists can turn
from what they've believed and even from what they've sworn the Bible to say.
Not to many Christians today believe that the earth is the center of the
universe, and while it took a great while for that to get around, strongly
believed, supposedly Biblically based ideas can be discounted.
> 
> That is true. Some Christians take the product of scientific inquiry and say
> that God is awfully clever to have set things up that way. Creationists on
> the other hand believe that evolution does not occur. Forget about all those
> pesky DDT resistant mosquitos out there - they say nothing about natural
> selection.
> 
Not true.  No Creationists that I know of will deny environmental adaptation
and natural selection, what they deny is that humanity developed due to that
process.  They don't deny the process, just the conclusion that since it's
taking place now (on the small levels we can observe) it must therefor
account for how all life developed.
> 
> Why doesn't your God fall prey to that "same original cause dilemma"? Just
> because you define your god to be the uncaused cause? 

Because something must.  Since there is something now and we know that
something does not come from nothing and since we can imagine as far back as
the beginning of time itself and we can ask the question what was before that,
your univese that has always existed is simply another uncaused cause.  What
seems unlikely to me is something that follows natural and orderly laws to
seemingly break one of them to just appear (or to simply have been) when God,
who claims to have created the laws would be an original cause much more
likely to have the ability to create or to have existed eternally.

> This is part of the creationism
> problem: they define a theory and continue to dogmatically assert it even
> after it is demonstrated to be false ...

That's simply not true.  Isn't our topic unprovable ideas?  Are you going to
tell me that you can now demonstrate (let alone prove) that evolution IS how
life developed and that creation is not?  I'd love to see it.
> 
> So you think a god is likely because of the way man perceives questions of
> being and order. 

Did I say that?  I think God is likely because of a simple experimentally
proven idea that something does not come out of nothing.  If everything has
to follow laws then to me, this law prohibits big bangs and eternally
existant universes but does not prohibit Gods who say they have created these 
laws and universes.

> Why can't I just assume that the universe is uncaused?
> What is it about the universe that makes you think it must have been caused
> by something? Why can't the universe be the uncaused cause? 

Simply because uncaused causes are improbable in themselves.  I used to try
to tell my Dad I never did anything bad that happened.  Instead of making up
a story that could possibly explain it, I just said I don't know, it
happened.  My dad never bought it and I can't either.  If we're going to get
mystic, in my mind you can't get mystic when dealing with things like natural
laws.

> Don't you think that it is rather egocentric for you to assume that 
> there is some being somewhat like yourself that caused everything? 

It could be, but how 'like me' is God?  He doesn't have a physical body, a
shape, a sex, an age, he has no physical attributes or tie to this physical
world other than having created it.  How similar are we?  Secondly, the main
similarity we do have is that we can both tell right from wrong (an ability
He says He gave us) and He has asked us to become as much like Himself as we
can.  I'm not saying that God is like me, I'm saying that we are like God and
only because He chose to create us that way.

				Rick Frey

"He it is who reduces rulers to nothing and makes the judges of the earth
meaningless.  Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely they have been sown
Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth but He merely blows on them
and they wither and the storm carries them away like stubble.  To whom then
will you liken Me that I should be his equal?"  Isaiah 40:23-25