From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Atheistic creationism -- a tutorial
Date: 26 Sep 92 08:35:22 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <Bv3q7L.Hps.2@cs.cmu.edu> kck+@cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge) writes:
>> From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)

>> 	Now you could have made the point that Creationism postulates
>> 	the creation of fully formed complex structures in situ, whereas
>> 	science at most postulates the generation of matter at the lowest
>> 	level of complexity.

>Here I think you touch on the core of the problem people are having with the
>term "atheistic creationism" -- creationism isn't about ex nihlio appearance
>of matter or whatever, per se. It is about ex nihlio creation by a conscious
>directing intelligent agent. To talk about "creatorless creationism" is
>oxymoronic. 

>There is also the matter of common usage. Theistic evolutionists believe in
>a creator, but neither we nor ICR types would feel comfortable using the
>term "creationist" to describe us.

Interesting and well taken points.  However one could argue that Christian
theology, which permeates our culture, has narrowed the meaning of creation.
The notion that creation implies a creator is really a postulate, that
we have absorbed from our culture.  By default we think of ourselves as
apart from the world, acting upon it.  I build a machine -- that is
creation.  A tree grows -- that is not.  In either case a more complex
thing is produced from the less complex.  However we do not think of the
coming into being of the tree as creative because we [or our equivalent]
are not part of the process.  One can interpret "God created Man in His
own image." as meaning:  God, a supernatural entity disjoint from the
natural world, has created us as supernatural entities, i.e. disjoint
from the natural world.

On this reading, the claim that creatorless creationism is oxymoronic
is really the attempt the philosophic basis for discussion.


>> Your point is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree.  If the supernatural
>> interacts with the natural then that point of interaction is a valid area
>> of investigation.  Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Angels appear
>> on Broadway bearing flaning swords, smiting the vendors of pornography.
                       --------------
>Would those be swords which produced a delectable carmel-covered dessert
>substance?

	Have you no shame?

>> Let us say that devouring demon appear from the depths, consuming all in
>> their path who are not in a state of grace.  Now this would be no mere
>> matter of metaphysics.  The determination of whether said angels and 
>> demons were supernatural, or magic, or advanced science might might be
>> beyond us -- scholarly studies of the dining habits of demons would not.

>The problem is that given a single event of demon's-night-out-for-dinner,
>there would be a large (if not infinite) set of hypotheses consistent with
>the limited data available....

Oh dear, there is an extremely infelicitous typo in the my text.  I had
mean to say devouring demons [plural].  While there is not much science
can say about singular events, except perhaps to study their effects,
there is a great deal it could say about common events, even if they
are supernatural.

Piers Anthony, a prolific fantasy and science fiction writer of dubious
artistic integrity, wrote an interesting series of novels [the
incarnation series]  in which the forces of heaven and hell were
immediately present on Earth in a very direct form.  Thus Satan
runs advertising campaigns, people's souls have a percentage of
goodness that can be measured, etc.

Now all of this may seem crude.  However if we look at the dominant
world view of 500 years ago and the world view of many today, God
and the Devil are explicitly present and active in the world.  Good
things that happen are the direct handiwork of God; bad things that
happen are the direct handiwork of the Devil.  The world around us,
in this view, is the filled with manifestations of the supernatural.

Now what has happened is that the entire world view of religion
based superstition has been invalidated by science.  What I am getting
at it that if the universe were truly as our ancestors saw it and
as many fundamentalists see it today, the supernatural would be
present and available in a form that science could interact with.
-- 
Richard Harter: SMDS Inc.  Net address: rh@smds.com Phone: 508-369-7398 
US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742.    Fax: 508-369-8272
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
Newsgroups: talk.origins