From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: The Philosophical problems of Creationism (Was: Try the Bible (Re: Calling Young-earth Creationists)
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: ZEUS Central Data Aquisition
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 21:28:28 GMT

In article <1992Aug15.025008.26950@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>,
tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode) writes:
|>In article <1992Aug14.210457.168004@zeus.calpoly.edu>
|>skroger@zeus.calpoly.edu (Seth L. Kroger) writes:
|>>julian@fraser.sfu.ca (Julian Shillcock) writes:
|>>>
|>>>Hmmm, I am not sure what "no such" means but it is not obvious to
|>me
|>>>that there can be no absolutes in our unverse. Pi is a
|>transcendental
|>>>number seems a pretty absolute statement: or is it false for some
|>>>other (arbitrarily different) life form somewhere.
|>>
|>>Ahh, but do we know it exactly?
|>
|>Pi in a Euclidean space can be defined in closed form and can be
|>calculated
|>to any specified precision in a finite period of time; I think that's
|>sufficient to say that we know it exactly. 

Unfortunately not so. PI may be defined, however the definition rests on
the definition of a calculus. PI is only defined to the same extent that
the calculus is defined. In order to argue about whether the calculus is
defined we have to resort to a calculus of the definedness of calculii,
thus the objection is raised agin for the metacalculus. Ultimately every
calculus is undefined, the most that can be said is that it is
consistent with another calculus or with itself.

[Note that the traditional tool used at this point, recursion is not
avaliable since recursion itself might be suspect.]

For practical purposes this is not a problem since it is the utility of
a calculus that is important, not whether it is "true" in an absolute
sense.

An equally consistent theory of the Universe is that all objects fulfil
the predicitions of the skilled predictor. To make this work it is
necessary to realise that the past is itself an abstraction and our only
interaction with it is through present day artifacts. If sufficient
contradictory evidence is fabricated, a historical fact becomes a
non-fact since there is no distinction on the basis of the evidence
between the two hypotheses.

According to the skilled predictor theory the Universe began as a small,
flat earth arround which the sun revolved and grew in time and space
with the "discoveries" of Newton, Galileo, Einstein etc. 

By this theory Man is creator since by his intellect he created the
material Universe. This leaves only the age old problem of what created
thought to which the answer is thought.

By each second we get older, we do not live at discrete moments of time,
only in the intervals between moments in time, without time we do not
exist. The question of where we will be in the future is futile since we
have no concrete proof of our self-past. At an extreeme we can only say
that we exist at the precise moment that we are contemplating self
existence, all else is illusion.

 
So having demonstrated what happens when you cease to accept the
yardstick of congruence with observed physical reality as a measure of
how good a theory is perhaps we might stick to the simplest solution in
accordance with the facts?

The creationists are off on the wrong track. Instead of trying to
disprove evolution they should merely concentrate on reconciling the
numerous discrepancies between the Genesis account and observation.
Meanwhile they should accept the working hypothesis that God for some
mysterious reason chose to make the Universe such that it is entirely
consistent with an altogether different theory and accept that future
evidence is likely to concur with this observation.

One difficulty the Creationists seem to avoid is the impossibility of
defining time in the Creation era. This is a serious problem since time
is observably dependent on the structure of the Universe. If God chose
to use a different metric for space-time structure during the creation
era then there is no comparison possible between them. If he did not he
would have to be bound by the same set of physical laws. This is a non
trivial problem since time is not an independent quantity, time is an
abstraction *defined* by the laws of physics. To take a trivial example
the day is defined by the spinning of the earth on it's orbit. Is the
creationist account to be taken that the earth performed no more than
six rotations about it's axis during this period? What of the account of
the first day, how is time to be defined?


Phill Hallam-Baker