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To: spirited irish; Alamo-Girl; GodGunsGuts; TXnMA; YHAOS; CottShop; hosepipe; marron; metmom; djf
...Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas explain that ancient Egyptians, “believed that matter had always existed; to them it was illogical to think of a god making something out of absolutely nothing. Their view was that the world began when order came out of chaos, and that ever since there has been a battle between the forces of organization and disorder. (There was) a creative force within (chaos) that commanded order to begin. This latent power which was within the substance of the chaos did not know it existed; it was a probability...within the randomness of disorder.”

What on earth could a "creative," yet "latent" "power" existing within the "substance of chaos" — a chaos that doesn't even "know" it has this power (indeed, if it's chaos, how could it?), but wields it nonetheless, as the "origin" of subsistent entities — possibly be???

This is just a bunch of unintelligible gobbledy-gook. None of these terms has even been defined. Such statements don't even make for a plausible myth, let alone justify any pretension of having anything to do with science.

One key term that has not been defined is randomness. To me, a person who uses the term "randomness" is simply making a confession that there's something going on that he doesn't understand. For as Alamo-Girl has pointed out on several occasions, we cannot say whether something is random unless we know what the "system is" in which it participates. To say that such and such is "random" is tantamount to saying we don't know what the "system is."

Here I'm restating A-G, hopefully accurately.

I mean really, are we really supposed to allow ourselves to be suckered into "performances" like this?

Thank you ever so much for your trenchant and insightful analysis, spirited irish!

616 posted on 02/07/2009 2:40:22 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
One key term that has not been defined is randomness. To me, a person who uses the term "randomness" is simply making a confession that there's something going on that he doesn't understand. For as Alamo-Girl has pointed out on several occasions, we cannot say whether something is random unless we know what the "system is" in which it participates. To say that such and such is "random" is tantamount to saying we don't know what the "system is."

Truly, it would be much better if they simply said "unpredictable."

The term "random" suggests that they know what the system is. And the number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable.

Thank you so much for your excellent insights, dearest sister in Christ!

626 posted on 02/07/2009 10:53:42 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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