From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Throop/Nietzsche problems
Date: 27 Dec 1992 04:08:32 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

In article <24DEC199215242978@iago.caltech.edu> lmh@iago.caltech.edu (Henling, Lawrence M.) writes:
>In article <184@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) aka ted holden writes...
>>Evolution logically denies the next world. 

	Not true, evolution, and science in general, make no comments on
a next world or other world or supernatural relm, or one's own spirituality,
and indeed to have one's religion or spiritual awareness to be threatened
by the circumspect language of science and the provisional findings of
speaks of a weakened awareness of the scared. If this is not true, then
the person's sense of religion that feels threatened by evolution is
corrupted by his wanting wordly power and coercion over others.

>> Without something beyond this
>>world, what meaning would you claim your life has?

	Does "Meaning" come only from supernatural acts and trancendant
moral messages? How about deeds in this world? How about wisdom about
this world? You surely use this world to argue for that other. Why should
we conclude that you have no meaning in this one alone?

>>  What do you plan on 
>>doing within the next ten years which anybody 5000 years from now will have
>>any way of knowing about or which will affect them or anything else in the
>>universe in any way?

	Well at least contributing to the furtherance of my own kind, by
having and raising children and teaching them well. If I can leave some
tangable mark of me, I will try, but I just as firmly believe that I have
only this life to live as I cannot be sure that your other world exists
except in wish. What if our lives ends with our deaths, that is, the end
of our body? Then this whole thing about an afterlife is a big joke
purpetrated to get conformity out of people. But, if we lived as though
this life was it, we might try harder to make something of it for ourselves
and other humans.

> Evolution has no comment on the next world, assuming there is any such.
>
> Congratulations, ted, you have made your mark. I am sure that even 5000
>years from now people will still recall your illogical posts. You are a
>Usenet legend in your own time on so many newsgroups that it is difficult
>to comprehend. 
>
>larry henling  lmh@shakes.caltech.edu

	I am dissappointed that Ted seems to have all the old and predictable
hallmarks of the people we have been debating with all these years, that
it really is a Christian religion, or something closely derivative, and
all its assumptions, held as indoctrinated prejudices mostly, about Mankind
that drives his arguments, and not something more substancial philosophically
or otherwise.

	Even though I am well equipped to argue the scientific facts that
relate to Creationist arguments, and I sometimes engadge in this sort of
stuff, I think that the meat of this debate is the set of assumptions about
Man's nature, and it surprizes me alittle that this discussion doesn't get
much beyond the level of Ted's opinions. Were Ted able to elaborate on
the implications of his own opinons and debate the opposing analysis
better, this debate might evolve.

	1) No sufficiency has been provided for a early prefection in
	  the condition of Man.

	2) No argument for the cause or necessity of a "Fall" of man
	   has been given.

	3) No argument that Man's spiritual enlightment is anything so
	   remote as the past or far away has been made.

	4) No proscription of how Man improves his condition, or even if
	  he can or needs to has been made.

	5) No argument that Man cannot know widsom without help, especially
	   supernatural help, has been made.

	6) No accounting of morals has been given that could operate
	   in the absense of a supernatural authority.

	This is old hat, which Creationists, Catastrophists, etc., have
harped on but will not elaborate on. It is like a Theory of Creation, this
is just the same problem, there is no theory. About the best we can get
is quoting of Scripture, because we are dealing with zombies.

Bruce Salem


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