Subj : Re: The universe
To   : Bob Eyer
From : John Wilson
Date : Tue Jan 02 2001 08:53 pm

-=> Bob Eyer wrote to Joshua Lee <=-


 BE> The notion that the universe began with the Big Bang is merely a
 BE> consequence of the operation of a number of highly confirmable
 BE> and replicable natural laws, such as those which are generally
 BE> recognised within the rubric of General Relativity.

 Well, ok, but only because I have *faith* in what you say. :-) I will never
 have the math to *know* this is true, and I still find pleasure in that all
 natural laws once the four forces were yet undivided causes
 sciences' mouth to close.

 (Vastly more interesting to me: when did `true' consciousness
 begin. And where? And what kind of levels are we talking about?
 How much `higher' is there?)

 -----------
 Y'know we are living in an Age of Increasing Scale:
 Thinking in Cosmic terms a billion years is a handle-able
 concept, we think of giga-bytes in our hard drive...
 The Pentium 4 has over 43 million transisters...
 Maybe as Kurtzweil suggests *that* is the True Direction of Progress
 in this universe, not life, not human consciousness, but
 intelligent conscious computers. (cf. "The Spiritual Machine")
 Maybe the Universe just invented and then used human beings
 for a short time to build the machines She really needs...
 And Reality and Science Fiction merge....
 (On reading on, I feel like you're replying!)


 BE> -However, this is neither here nor there.


   Uh, yep. :-)

               
 BE> -popular among scientists during the 1950s; but nobody made the
 BE> -mistake of supposing that the Big Bang theory ought to be
 BE> attached -to the catechism of some religion.

   Nor that it some way it `disproved' God (or even seriously damaged
   creation Myths, myths are pretty damn flexable :-)
   

 BE> What about the proposition 'God exists'.  Doesn't Judaism have
 BE> faith that God exists?

 Something assumed isn't doctrine....(As I await Josh's answer... :-)

 BE> Well, science dispensed with final causes some hundreds of years
 BE> ago when a lot of Aristotelian science was discredited.

 Mortimer J. Adler would fiercely argue against the use of the
 word *discredited*...

 But less that I wish, the "Yes or No" questions still exist...
 and amazingly enought more, it seems to me, in science, than in theology,
 which on the whole includes many-valued logic (with sometimes, a little
 too much relief, IMHO :-) in it's attempts to describe reality....

 BE> literally true, as opposed to metaphors for some larger and
 BE> vaguer concept.

   You jes' cain't get no larger or vaguer than when you use that word
   "god". I truly understand (after a month on HOLYSMOKE) that I do
   *not* understand *anyone's* use of the word. MY use of the world is
   as near as I can figure out is unique. It probably is not: the preceeding
   is but a relection of my ignorance as well as ego :-)


 BE>  The only religionists who are going to attack
 BE> science on the subject of evolution and cosmology are those who
 BE> think the accounts in their religious texts, notably Genesis
 BE> Chapters 1 and 2, are literally true

 I thought more than 60 years ago that these people were a dying lot, that
 this would soon no longer be true...

 One of the rare youthful thoughts I remember that has, sadly, proven not to
 be true.                         


 BE> I cannot think of any scientific claim which shows science
 BE> reconciling itself with religion.

 ...or having anythng at all to do with it.

 "Scientific" attempt to despoil it (or at least to divest it of
 it's more literal aspects) : futile fun in HOLYSMOKE... :-)





 
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