[lbo-talk] The "A" lives, apparently

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon Dec 13 10:01:25 PST 2004


The infinite capacity of language seems relevant here. We can always ask, like the proverbial child questioning a parent, another "why" question; why ?...why ?...why ? Answer: God...uh, why God ?.

But , "God" is used as a way to cut off the infinite regress of "why" questions. In that way,God is definitively mysterious, unknow_able_, not just unknown. "God" means something/one about which you cannot or may not ask "why ?". God is the "why question" terminator. "Good God, child, stop asking me 'why' ! "

Good to hear Hawking led the peace demo !

Charles

^^^^

C. G. Estabrook wrote

I think this is a good argument against the intelligent-design line.Intelligent-Design departs from the classical Christian (and Judaic andIslamic) notion of creation in favor of a mechanistic argument, which falls to this objection.

Stephen Hawking (who BTW led the anti-war demonstration in London on 2 November), Lucasian professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge (Newton's chair), wrote that after his theoretical labors, "You still have the question: why does the universe bother to exist? If you like, you can define God to be the answer to that question." That's far closer to the classic notion than intelligent-design.

For most Abrahamic theists. "God" is the name for whatever accounts for the fact THAT there is a universe. HOW the universe is, is of course the province of science, and terrible muddles (e.g., the Galileo case) have resulted from confusing those questions. --CGE

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004, John Adams wrote:


> All this is very interesting. Perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here,but
what is the argument against the idea that, if the physical world is too complex to be explained without a creator, then the existence of a creator capable of producing such a world is at least as inexplicable as the creatorless existence of the world?



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