On Apr 30, 2013, at 9:29 PM, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote: (01)
> 1. Quoting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor, "In the scientific
>method, parsimony is an epistemological, metaphysical or heuristic preference,
>not an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result."
>
> It is certainly metaphysically justifiable to prefer a theory that explains
>the observed evidence without making use of a supreme deity. However,
>parsimony does not constitute scientific proof. (02)
Hi Kathryn (03)
Your position is often claimed by philosphers of science, but in fact parsimony
is used constantly throughout scientific explanations in practice, and indeed I
would argue (and will, if you wish to :-) that science simply would not be
possible unless it were, since no empirical tests could refute non-parsimonious
explanations. The LHC found the Higgs boson, but if hadn't, then a
nonparimonious explanation could easily have explained that: perhaps the Higgs
events were shielded by a hitherto unknown effect which just happens to block
HIggs-revealing events from being detected. Whats wrong with that kind of
thinking? (04)
>
> 2. Your argument presupposes that "God" means "supreme being who makes
>supernatural things happen." (05)
Just "supreme being" will do. (06)
> While this is (at least in part) what some people mean by God, it is by no
>means a universal view. I know many people -- some of them clergy -- who
>believe in God, but do not believe miracles happen. (07)
The ones I have the closest familiarity with do believe in miracels and indeed
believe that to not believe in miracles is heresy. But miracles are not
necessary in order to apply Occamist thinking. Just the idea of a creator of
the universe is enough of a stretch for me, given the size and complexity of
the universe, which so far exceeds the conception held during the entire
history of theology that it is hard to even comprehend the necessary scales. At
the beginning of the 20th century astronomers thought that the milky way was
the entire universe, an estimate that was, we now know, out by at least 28
orders of magnitude. (08)
It is quite hard to even get one's head around how big the universe is. A
"being" made all this? How? And even if it did, why would such an incredibly
large and powerful creature be particularly concerned with us, who occupy a
film of fluid smeared on the surface of a small rock orbiting a nondescript
star, one of about 300 billion stars in a galaxy which is one among perhaps 200
billion galaxies, and who have existed as a species for only perhaps the last
0.2 million years of the universe's 14 billion year history? There are events
going on throughout the universe which, if they happened anywhere near to our
star, would annihilate all of us in milliseconds, without the rest of the
universe even noticing our absence. (09)
Apparently this creator had a rather long time to wait until we showed up to
worship Him, and He must have a very keen eye to find us on this tiny rock, in
all this space and energetic turmoil that He created. Rather wasteful with
energy and matter, this God, and plenty of time on His hands. (010)
Pat (011)
>
>
> On Apr 25, 2013, at 12:39 AM, Pat Hayes wrote:
>
>>
>> On Apr 24, 2013, at 10:11 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
>>
>>> I'm willing to grant that all arguments for the existence of God
>>> are unscientific. But I also believe that all arguments *against*
>>> the existence of God are equally unscientific. It's actually harder
>>> to develop a solid proof that something does *not* exist.
>>
>>
>> The basic scientific argument against the existence of God is that there is
>absolutely no observational evidence for the existence of a God, nor any
>reason to hypothesise such an entity in order to explain anything that is
>observable. A very straightforward application of Occam's principle then
>suffices. Of course this is not a *proof*, but it is a sound *scientific*
>argument. Proofs are irrelevant here. There is no proof that the flying
>spaghetti monster does not exist, but that does not shake the faith of the
>true Pastafarian.
>
>
>
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> (012)
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