Re: [OT] voting

From: Oliver Elphick (olly_at_lfix.co.uk)
Date: 12/08/03

  • Next message: Nate Duehr: "Re: Backports.org" 
    To: "s. keeling" <keeling@spots.ab.ca>, John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org>
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 20:49:16 +0000

    On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 18:12, s. keeling wrote:
    > Incoming from Paul Morgan:
    ...
    > Anything extrauniversal can have no effect on that universe. Variable
    > is out of scope. That much is knowable.

    That's just wordplay. You implicitly define extrauniversal as meaning
    altogether outside and not intersecting with the universe, so your
    statement is not knowable but tautological. Paul obviously does not use
    the word in the same way. The creator by definition does affect the
    universe he has created and sustains, and so on your terms is not
    extrauniversal. He is a being of a different order. He is necessarily
    far beyond his creation (just as you are far beyond anything you are
    able to create) and no part of his creation is able to understand
    anything about him which he does not reveal.

    Most of our knowlege of God comes by revelation. In the creation itself
    he reveals only his eternal power and deity; demonstrated, among other
    things, by the immense and beautiful complexity of living systems. Paul
    cited DNA. On a "higher" level, photosynthesis and blood-clotting are
    two very complex systems which need every part of them to work and the
    failure of any one part of which would kill the organism. This kind of
    irreducible complexity, of which continuing research reveals more and
    more, reinforces Paley's argument from design, which has demonstrated
    the truth of creation for at least 2500 years. (Socrates cited the
    obvious design of the eye, and Cicero employed the argument from design
    against Lucretius and the Epicureans.)

                             ----------------

    On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 19:11, John Hasler wrote:
    > > 2. The watchmaker is extrauniversal by definition, and anything
    > > extrauniversal is unknowable.
    >
    > Occam's Razor.

    "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" (plurality is not to be
    posited without need), or, the simpler hypothesis is to be preferred.

    That tells nothing about the truth of a proposition; in the end it is
    only a principle for selecting more elegant arguments. Elegance is not
    equivalent to truth.

    Applying Occam's razor to Debian packages, you could rationally claim
    that their apparent design is a delusion; the idea of a designer is
    merely an unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses and packages simply
    evolve by random mutation (bits getting switched by cosmic rays). That
    is clearly a simpler hypothesis, since it leaves out a multiplicity of
    unnecessary elements (the Debian maintainers)! 

    -- 
Oliver Elphick                                Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight, UK                             http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839  932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
                 ========================================
     "For I am the LORD your God; ye shall therefore  
      sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am 
      holy."          Leviticus 11:44 
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