Subject: By God!
From: Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Date: Wed Jan 19 2000 - 10:25:33 EST
Jim,
My not bothering to be specific with regard to your posts has less to do
with a reluctance to engage with you - though believe me that reluctance
exists, but more for reasons of lack of energy on my part.
Since your posts say the same things over and over and over again and not
very interestingly or differently in each new, umm, incarnation, any impulse
I might have to engage you in any form of intellectual discourse is dulled,
drowned and defeated by the sheer physical difficulty I have in being able
to read your posts through to the end.
Possibly, I am that much poorer for this loss. In any event, I feel that
your points, such as they are, are adequately addressed by some of the
links I posted to the list in the last few days and I chose to address
primarily your style and stance of sanctimonious superiority. I think I
forgot to add "boring" and "unimaginative", but all of that of course was
just being gratuitously inflammatory and not with an intent to get into a
dialogue with you. If you ever find time off from writing to the list to
peruse those links, you may find your cause for complaint against me
diminish some.
Since I delete your mails immediately on receipt, to make my bald assertions
some more specific on substantive grounds, let me address myself just to
your use of the phrase "rational discourse" while stating your views on, let
me for purposes of simplicity, call it The Creation. It would be too lengthy
to get into the minimum conditions for rationality -- of falsifiability, of
objective verifiability, not to mention anything about Occam's Razor, the
simplicity of which in the scientific sense seems to elude you. We do not
need to get into nit-picking obfuscatory digressions or dilations on Big
Bang or any of its models, or indeed invoke Hawkins or Penrose to slice
"God" out of any acceptable hypothesis in the rational or scientific sense.
The simple argument, as has been pointed out here is that ANY alternative
hypothesis of God simply postulates what is sought to be explained. It
postulates the very problem and leaves it at that. By definition,
explanations that build on simple premises are more plausible and more
satisfying than explanations that have to postulate complex and
statistically improbable beginnings. And you can't get much more complex
than an Almighty God, even if he is seen as a simple, benign creature.
Needlessly pointing out that this "God" or Deity or Creator, regardless of
pedantic carping and equivocation (or references to the 'religions based on
the Vedas' which is a safe bet since not many here would know much about
those] as to its definition, has to be explained in turn. Simply put, who
created that? Or is it "turtles, turtles all the way"? (as the lady who
believed that the earth rested on a giant turtle is said to have said to
Russell on his asking what the turtle was resting on)
It would be too time-consuming a job to catalogue all the deep flaws in ANY
variant of a theory of creationism, or supporting a pre-emptory condemnation
of it which is why I posted those links in the recent days. I haven't even
had time to post up the most relevant ones, but if comprehensiveness is what
you are looking for, I take that job to have been admirably done by:
Philip Kitcher: Abusing Science, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1982
Douglas Futyama, Science on Trial, The Case for Evolution, New York, 1982
Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock,
Harper & Row, SF, 1985.
To continue in the same condescending tone, you might even enjoy some of
the more recent books (whose only fault is simplifying a bit too much):
Daniel Dennett: Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, 1995
Richard Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable, 1997 or 1998
These are all highly accessible books, not requiring any specialised
knowledge, and I am sure that you would find them edifying indeed.
I blame it all on devil and not on God that these ideas haven't become
part of folklore as yet. As Richard Smullyan puts it in _Is God a
Taoist? _"Devil: 'the inordinate time it takes for sentient beings as a
whole to come to be enlightened'." So that's why the devil must get his
due, I suspect.
This, Jim, is much more than I wished to say to you or had the time for. If
despite this you are still concerned about some of the adjectives I chose to
describe your messages with, please let me know and I'd be willing to take
time off to justify them to your satisfaction, if it is okay for this thread
to be carried on here.
Sonny
PS: As for your latest attempt at describing the indescribable experiences
you have been privileged to have, since Sagan has been invoked a number of
times in the past, may I with due respect suggest at least a cursory perusal
of his "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" too? For
the present I'd refrain from saying anything about those who believe in
Elvis, UFO sightings and the X-Files, but do beg indulgence for a short
quote from one of the Richard Dawkins links I posted:
"Some people believe in God because of what appears to them to be an inner
revelation. Such revelations are not always edifying but they undoubtedly
feel real to the individual concerned. Many inhabitants of lunatic asylums
have an unshakable inner faith that they are Napoleon or, indeed, God
himself. There is no doubting the power of such convictions for those that
have them, but this is no reason for the rest of us to believe them. Indeed,
since such beliefs are mutually contradictory, we can't believe them all.
There is a little more that needs to be said."
Sonny
who rates _Our Man in Havana_ as one of the most hilarious books ever and
now wants to quickly re-read the End of the Affair, having forgotten all
about the God angles in that.
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" ... there could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English
messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains.
There could be, I suppose ... but I also can't prove that mushrooms could
not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us." --Daniel Dennett
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