dvunkannon
Posts: 1377
Joined: June 2008
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I took the bait of VJT's latest green cheese, and read the linked to Parsons and Herrick essays on the lack of a need for God (or not).
1 - UD is really just Apologetics R Us. They have completely given up on generating thoughtful discussion in favor of their ideas as science.
2 - Herrick tries mightily and fails in convincing me of this:
| Quote | | This all adds up to a perfectly good explanatory reason to embrace theism. After all, what better reason is there to hold a belief, than that it is the best explanation for something we are trying to make sense of (in this case, the existence of the whole of what there is)? |
Why is a personal God a better "brute fact" and "best explanation" than a matrix of numbers, such as might appear in a TOE? I can make so many more, and more useful, inferences with the numbers than with God, or the numbers + God.
(This also the point that KairosFlatus doesn't get in his rant against the materialist definition of science.)
A lot of the argument that Parsons criticizes wanders in Kalam territory, with the theists holding that an "actual infinite" can't exist (unless its their BFF infinite, the Holy One, Blessed Be He) and Parsons asking why not?
I was thinking on the drive to work today that the existence of the universe going forwards in time qualifies as an "actual infinite". Too bad Nak can't ask VJT what he thinks of that. Mapou would agree with Nakashima the future exists just as much as the past or present. And for those UD commenters that hold that numbers exist independent of the human mind, any infinite number would qualify as an "actual" infinite.
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I’m referring to evolution, not changes in allele frequencies. - Cornelius Hunter
I’m not an evolutionist, I’m a change in allele frequentist! - Nakashima
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