From: 160955r@garnet.berkeley.edu ()
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Does theory of evolution affect belief in God?
Date: 16 Apr 1992 22:49:34 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu

Well folks, here you have it again! Another attempt to establish respectability
of the religious discourse through pseudo logic. Why can't you religious people
out there say that you simply BELIEVE the Bible. After all, yoiu can believe
whatewver you want. Why do you have to dig yourselves into holes and try to
"scientifically prove" creationism or other logical absurdity?


In article <1992Apr16.203138.23810@en.ecn.purdue.edu> muehlhau@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John Muehlhausen) writes:

>Indeed, without His existence we would not exist.  Independantly of how you
>want to define "shapeless void", we know that such was once the state of our
>universe before life on earth.  All that we know was swirling superheated
>matter that _somehow_ came to be as it is today.  There is a _BIG_ problem
>with this happening by chance: 1) the universe naturally tends to disorder
>(increasing entropy) and there would therefore be a near infinitely small
>chance that, say, a protein would "happen". 2) Even if it did, the
>probability that it would survive, and in fact flourish in seeming mockery of
>chaos theory, approaches NULL.  Therefore I am very, very confident in saying
>that, at the very least, some outside ordering energy must be responsible for
>the amazing diversity and complexity, and yet unity of everything we know.
>"Ordering" is the key... Energy of itself does not tend to get put to good
>work - the natural tendency is to dissipate in the least interesting fashion
>possible.  "Ordering" implies - even demands - intelligence, so all of a
>sudden you have God in the picture.  Especially when one considers the
>immensity of what science has discovered, and has yet to discover, about how
>it all works.

I do not really know where to start..OK: how do we know that "shapeless void"
singularly obtained before life on Earth? How about other forms of life on
other planets. Actually lots of solar systems are older than ours. Zillions
of things could have happened there before "life on Earth"..

The definition of "infinitessimaly small" probability has a meaning when we talk
about a finite number of events, i.e. finite time. As far as we have it now,
time is not finite; in this setting "infinitessimaly small" may become "certi-
tude". I think in fifth grade here they tell you the story about a sufficiently
large number of chimpanzees left by themselves for long enough time who will
definitely discover the theory of relativity..

Another gross simplification is the entropy argument. To say the least, who has
ever shown that system degradation is a linear process? Nobody, that's who! In 
other words, dissipating systems may experience surges in "organization" on 
the way to destrtuction. And, in view of the time frame involved, these "surges"or spontaneous self organization sessions may last billions and billions of yeasrs!

Ordering does not imply imtelligence or design.A bee-hive is ordered and(I hope)you are not prepared to maintain that God is personally supervising every
input-output system in the insect world)- this would make bears candidates to
owning their own hell. Adaptability  and evolution produce order not God! 
>
>Another interesting twist is that there does not seem to be enough matter in
>the universe (dark or otherwise) for the universe to be cyclic.  Thus what
>happened the split second before the "big bang" is still a mystery.  Of
>course I think God did it, so I don't really have a problem with it :-)
>

There have been innumerable twists in the history of science. For a long while
we thought tuberculosis was caused by impure air emanating from swamps. Now we
know better and have penicillin. No later than 1900 the academic community stron
gly believed in the existence of ether, and built explanatory models accordin-
gly. Now we have particle accelerators and know better. Your argument, is, basi-
cally, the simplistic: "since we can not understand infinity, there must be a
God".


And, last, but not least. If you really think God did it, and, amazingly enough
do not have a problem with it, let me ask you:

W H O   M A D E  G O D???

Awaiting for your answer,
-- 
Radu T. Tomescu at UCBerkeley
Department of Economics

Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc