From: jnielsen@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (John F Nielsen)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Science and God
Date: 22 Jan 93 08:32:20 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University

In article <Jan.19.01.07.06.1993.2360@farside.rutgers.edu> rcheek@access.digex.com (Richard Cheek) writes:

>a belief in God or even to prove it. Do you really expect to sweep all
>that aside with a few lines of ungrounded assertions?

Pratically everyone in Europe at one time believed the earth was flat,
that does not make it flat. Christianity was a *very* powerful force
in the middle ages, it is not surprising that people accepted it. But,
what is most popular is not necessarily the most right. Galelio(sp?)
suffered a lot for "heretical" beliefs. Also, are you claiming that
the philosophy at that time was as well scrutinized as the current
state of philosophy now? 



>is limitted to our own material universe? The simple point of the
>apologetic argument is that since the Universe is finite in time, something
>must be greater than the Universe as we know it and something must have
>caused it's creation.

Hold on, what is this "since the Universe is finite in time" claim?
I really don't think Bing Bang theorists claim there was absolutely
nothing before the big bang.

>The teleological argument you are mangling here does not deny local or
>affirm an increase in local order as would be suggested in your analogy.
>The point is that, since we can only propose that which we have experience
>of, and that it is our experience that order of an intricate nature has
>a designer, that therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is a
>Designer of the Universe. 

Hold on that is circular argument. 

You are saying because intelligent beings can create order, therefore all order
is created by intelligent beings. 

For example, I could say that the complexity of a cell is an example
of order created independant of intelligence. You would say, well, the
only thing I know that can create order is intelligent beings,
therefore a God created that. But, it then does not matter what
example of order not created by humans I bring up, you will just
assert a God created it. In other words, you are assuming that
non-intelligent order is impossible in order to prove that
all order is created by intelligence.

A more correct assumption is that:
"Intelligent beings can create order"

not

"Only Intelligent beings can create order."

john
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[The "big bang" involves the origin of space-time.  So there is no
time before the "big bang".  Of course it could be that things are
more complex.  But I believe Richard is correct in saying that in the
big bang model, the universe is finite in time (at least in the
backwards direction).  People tend to think that in the big bang some
very small mass of matter explodes at some specific time.  In that
concept it makes sense to ask what happened before the explosion.  But
it's more complex than that.  It's not a set of matter that's
exploding so much as space-time itself.  Also, there's no actual time
0, because in the quantum version of the model, before about 10**-33
sec (if I recall correctly -- that's from memory), the three space and
one time dimensions turn into 4 time dimensions.  So when you'd expect
to find T=0, there's no time at all.)  This is all based on Paul
Davies' book "The Mind of God".  --clh]