From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 9 Nov 1992 05:43:55 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <1992Nov9.000217.19228@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>In article <1dk66rINNe8l@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>>Its negative results towards religion are due only to the
>>fact that its positive results towards the physical world
>>disprove the mystical world's ability to affect the
>>physical world (except perhaps through the action of those
>>who maintain faith and expand "holy signs" into action, but
>>I have little doubt that the science of psychology would
>>explain these episodes, as well).
>
>     They do nothing of the sort.  You cannot offer proof that the
>     universe did not start from initial conditions set up by
>     God, 3 1/2 seconds ago. 

And you can offer neither proof that it did, nor proof of
any resemblance to a probability that it did.  I have my
memory and a continuous model of consciousness which tells
me that 3 1/2 seconds ago I was trying to figure out who
wrote your article.

When I was a very young metaphysician, with more emotional
problems than an American youth should be allowed to have,
I believed that the universe was all that I could see, and
if I wasn't looking at something someone was moving it out
of the way so that it could become what was in front of
me as I moved past it.  I'd catch a glimpse of a streetlight
and it would seem not to have been on before, and I'd imagine
that someone (elves, cherubs, teamsters, what have you) had
just turned it on, having forgotten to in the first place.
Then I believed the Earth was a great experiment, and someone
was watching how I did things.  I'd talk to them, but they
never talked back.

Since I determined that gods do not exist, I've found at
least mental health, if not a heightened spirituality and a
rather elegant ideal of consciousness and the purpose of a
productive, proactive life.

Paradoxical models of existence of the sort you propose
roll off my back as so many single-digit addition
problems.  All efforts to find evidence or a rationale for
faith in a non-evidentiary creator are proven to be simply
a waste of valuable time.  (What we have in this thread,
however, is an opportunity to educate, and that's never a
waste of time.)

>>Morality is a matter of psychology; desire and temperament
>>make a great force for personality, and the availability of
>>productive opportunities can forestall selfish tendencies.
>
>     Rather mechanistic view of morality, wouldn't you say?

It's far more pleasurable than the tyrannical one that the
churches espouse.  I'd rather form my ethics from the forces
in my environment than from the disputations of people that
I know couldn't out-think me (very few capable brains enter
the clergy, any more) and who use the threat of eternal
damnation to enforce their ideas of what my morality should
avoid.

>>But then, the "value system" of religions have resulted in
>>the inquisition and the crusades and any number of lost
>>civilizations (making it a force for its own evolution,
>>ironically enough).  
>
>     And 'Economics' has given us several of the most crushing

Not several of them; all of them.  They only USED religion
as a means to an end.  If I could remember his name I'd
refer you to an archaeology professor at the U. of Md. who
can give you three lectures on the ways religion has
emanated from the (literal) seat of government since before
the time of the Pharaohs.

>     totalitarian dictatorships the world has ever known.  I don't
>     consider that a blanket indictment of Economics.

Granted.  I don't eschew all of the things that religion
has ever attempted; I just don't like their reasoning, and
on the face of it I don't trust their method.

But then, very few economists actually believe in unseen
hands.

				--Blair
				  "It's good to be da king of kings..."
Newsgroups: sci.physics