Posted on 01/11/2003 9:53:34 PM PST by DWar
It did not defy logic, it defied popular scientific belief. Your statement can be used as easily against evolution. Push it to it's ultimate conclusion and the assertion becomes "logic is unreliable." Such a statement is an attempt to exempt your belief system from the laws of logical thinking. If your system of belief must be exempted from the laws of logic then it is nothing but a primitive (!) religion devised by men fearful of facing the God from whom they have fled.
Armchair "logic" is fine for brainstorming some ideas to test, but sooner or later you need to reality-check them or it's all just alchemy.
I'm all for that. Lets put a reality check on your explanation for the existence of matter. Understand, Mr. Dan, that much of your theory is alchemy. You have still failed to address the issue.
3: The third option is that matter was created.
Right, by the Big Bang. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
I think you might be in over your head as well. Why would you, Dan Day, who defends what he calls a scientific theory, ascribe to an explosion the attributes of deity? Do you still claim evolution is not a religion?
Really, now. Philosophers haven't been sitting around twiddling their thumbs since the death of Aquinas - Hume and Kant quite thoroughly and convincingly demonstrated the gross inadequacies and the total failure of the Prime Mover argument, and did it a century and a half ago, no less.
What was that about a defective foundation?
Regrettably, I have only one copy of Kierkegaard's "The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason", and am therefore loathe to donate it to the education of others...
Such "arguments" (including the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the phoney law of abiogenesis) when used by creationists are nothing more than jingles, or mantras, or incantations. Those who utter such "arguments" use them mindlessly. There's no substance, no relevance, no logical thread, no understanding, nothing. Abracadabra!
It is not a problem for Creationists who believe that there is a reality beyond this physical universe.
Such a belief raises more questions than it answers as attempts are made to describe such a "reality" without reference to time or space. We are asked not only to accept something unobservable and incomprehensible, as space and time are inherent in all of our ideas. Then we are to suppose that the makings of things as complex as consciousness, sensory preception, and actuation are contained in this incomprehensible "reality". In short, we must simply accept what does not make any sense.
So the pursuit to explain the universe does not end because it is explained, but because it becomes inexplicable.
Let's say God is not as simple minded as the Creationists think he is. Their conception of God is an insult to a supreme being.
So9
At Wounded Knee, the native tribes thought that their Ghost Dance shirts would be impervious to bullets. Not only is it unnecessary to place faith and reason in conflict, sometimes it's positively dangerous....
So9
Then you understand the futility of attempting to explain to others your knowledge of God. It cannot make sense with arguments or observations but only with a teleological connection between God and the individual.
If only creationists would accept Kierkegaard and stop contorting reason and observations with their backward arguments from conclusion, and selective skepticism.
Indeed. Nor as unsubtle.
I suspect that Kierkegaard's status as the intellectual father of existentialism hinders such an acceptance....
Why don't you give us your understanding of their answers?
Here is your reference to time and space:
The universe is expanding at nearly the speed of light.
It cannot expand into nothing since there would be nothing into which it could expand.
Therefore it is expanding into something.
That "something" is outside of the universe.
Therefore there exists something outside of the universe.
If a postulate is invalid because it raises more questions than it answers, then truly evolution is invalid.
Your argument is simply that the volume of the universe is infinite. The argument of a time before the big bang is simply that time is infinite. Logic doesn't require that the universe expand "into" anything, but if the universe does, than what do you suppose separates the universe from that thing? Inherent in your notion of that thing is that it is space. It is simply more of the universe.
The universe is, *by definition*, all that exists. There isn't an existence "outside" or "before" the universe. For the notion of a *finite* universe to have any unique meaning, that definition must be retained.
Maybe you are right and the universe is infinite. However, there is no inherent contradiction in the notion of an expanding universe of finite volume and time.
Next question, please.
I don't know what you mean here by "postulate", but an idea is not invalidated simply by raising questions. The trouble with the creationist view is that it not only ultimately doesn't explain anything (except to say "God makes it happen") but it asks us to accept a "reality" contrary to what we can observe and comprehend.
Many evolutionary theories at least attempt to explain observations within the realm of the observable universe.
Vague assertions that something is absurb or impossible does not make it absurd or impossible.
Now, if you really have something to say on the point, don't be afraid, just say it.
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