"Semper LibčrŽ" <nopolicestates????!?Hje77@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said :
>> No, you misunderstand. *If* the complexity of the universe means
>> that it requires a creator, then it follows that the creator also
>> requires a creator.
>
> Where did you get the idea I didn't understand it?
Your belief that the creator can be proved simply by observing the
complexity of the universe shows quite clearly that you do not follow the
Watchmaker Argument to its logical resolution.
> It seems that your understanding of a singularity in this context
There are two possibilities. The first is that you are attempting to
employ a complex mathematical concept used in cosmology to describe the
current understanding of black holes and other regions where Einstein's
model of relativistic space-time breaks down.
The alternative is that you are referring to singularity as the quality
of being singular, or unique. This sense, in the context you have used
it, would be more or less meaningless.
Still, given your mention further down of 'four-dimensional concepts', I
suspect you intended the former sense. Many cosmologists agree that the
presence of singularities in the current model of the universe indicates
that Einstein's concept of space-time is not an entirely accurate
description, and that there are rules that have yet to be observed and
described. This is reasonable: after all, Newton's laws, while still
immensely useful and generally reliable for our purposes, are not
entirely accurate either; yet they have served us well for four hundred
years. There is no reason to assume that Einstein's should be any more
complete a description of the universe, or that those yet to be
established will be. It's *possible* - that's the goal of science - but
the fact that something isn't a complete description doesn't mean that
it's a useless description.
The point is that singularities are generally considered to be a sort of
'error message'; a celestial 'does not compute'. They're telling us that
we haven't worked it all out yet, and we need to keep trying. Invoking
them in your arguments for the existence of God would therefore seem
inadvisable. We *might* suppose that the infinite chain of creators that
the Watchmaker Argument requires is the theological equivalent of the
mathematical infinities that appear at a singularity - but in both cases,
the presence of the infinities shows that we have got something wrong.
> The concept of God being omniscient is not new, it is the foundation
> of both the old and new testament - surprize, surprize.
'Surprise', these days.
No, the concept of God being omniscient is not new. But it is not
relevant here, either. The question is whether the complexity of the
universe implies a creator, whether that creator was omniscient or not.
> The vital element is that *intelligence* expressed in our visable
> world came from *intelligence*. You're just adding an incomprehensible
> element of "graduated eternity" into the formula to confound and
> confuse the logical element.
Not at all. As I said, the Watchmaker Argument is a paradox. It is
fundamentally unstable. It cannot stand by itself. It must resolve, and
it resolves by negating itself. You argue now that *intelligence*
required intelligence to come into being - but in that case the
intelligence that brought intelligence into being also required an
intelligence to come into being itself. And so on. Thus we have our
infinite regress. To resolve this, we must conclude either that the
endless chain of intelligences has simply always existed or that one of
these intelligences came into existence in some other way.
Either way, what can be applied to God can be applied to the cosmos. If
God could come into being without being created, then so could
intelligent life in our universe or anywhere else.
> There is no paradox here... just the inevitable result of trying to
> understand the equivalent of a four dimensional concept in a three
> dimensional world.
Before you start lecturing me on four-dimensional concepts, do some
research and find out what a singularity is. I don't claim any great
mathematical expertise myself, but a little basic research will do
wonders for you.
> We don't throw out what we know with what we can't
> fully know. To say your computer [or FITB] couldn't be the result of
> intelligence because doing so requires us to trace it back to infinity
> is, to me at least,
> absurd.
Yes, it is absurd - and that, of course, is why I didn't say it. The
computer is unquestionably the result of intelligence. But I do not
guess that because it's complex: I know it because I know what a computer
is and how it works.
The universe, however, is more of a mystery. We know about bits of it;
we know how certain processes work and we have some rough ideas how it
might all fit together. We have no idea, no clue at all, what the
greater context is, or whether there is a greater context; there's more
that we don't know about the universe than stuff we do know; and it's the
quest of science to observe, to test, and to find out as much as it can.
Again, as I said before, demoli****ng the Watchmaker Argument doesn't
prove that the universe *wasn't* created, and I don't know that it
wasn't. What it does do, though, is show that we cannot prove that it
was simply by reference to its complexity.
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