by prologos 43 Replies latest forum tech-support
my idea is also that there is no intervener required.
Sir I.N. was wrong when he thought out loud about the failing clockwork planet movements.
My proposition is that the whole is done so the maker will never be needed or discovered no matter how good our understanding of the mechanism gets.
A truly ingenius unselfish benefactor, giving us the benefit of our doubts
not desiring to be worshipped.
jgnat said-
Prologos: Sir Isaac, believed in a creator, God perhaps, opined that God would have to fine tune the solar system once in a while to keep it working.
This is the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority". I think Sir Isaac Newton went off the rails later in life in his occult studies.
Yup.
Remember too that Newton lived in a time before Darwin (which was a game-changer for scientists, where Darwin faced significant blow-back for only daring to state the TRUTH which he had observed). And more practically, Newton was a well-known popular public figure in Britain who faced significant blowback for NOT professing a belief in a God (where even today, it is career suicide for a politician to "come out" as an atheist, even worse than coming out as gay or even confessing to be a pedophile, since public opionion polls show atheists to rank even LOWER than pedophiles in US).
Hence Newton was more likely pragmatic and perhaps less courageous than Galileo, who lived long before and had the courage of his beliefs to take on the RCC and confront them (although Galileo was forced to recant his TRUE beliefs under the threat of death for heresy: remember, this was AFTER Galileo had seen Bruno being burnt at the stake for professing similar beliefs to his).
Newton also lived before social psychology had uncovered our current understanding of mass delusions (going with the crowd), eg few know that Newton was caught up in a South Seas investment bubble scheme, where he lost much of his fortune, saying:
Joseph Spence wrote that Lord Radnor reported to him "When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about the continuance of the rising of South Sea stock… He is also quoted as stating, "I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men."
Point being, it's hard to know WHY someone in the past or present confesses their belief in God, so it's good to take their stated beliefs with a grain of salt, either way (and hence YET another reason why the "appeal to authority" is potentially fallacious).
Adam
Prologos: Yes, it is quite possible that there is a maker which decided to hide himself from us. Of course, a universe in which that were true would be indistinguishable from a universe in which it wasn't, so it's a moot point.
Benefactor? Who lets his creations just live or die with no care at all? How magnificent.
"My proposition is that the whole is done so the maker will never be needed or discovered no matter how good our understanding of the mechanism gets. A truly ingenius unselfish benefactor, giving us the benefit of our doubts not desiring to be worshipped."
"You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem. Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes. We know when and where they start. We know what drives them. We know what mitigates their destructive power. And anyone who has studied global warming can tell you what makes them worse. The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms." - Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's fine and you have the right to believe and rationalize things in a way that make sense to you. But don't you think that your thought still falls under the "God of the gaps" category? We will never have all the answers, but with the overwhelming evidence all around, god is not an answer. Take care, keep searching and researching. Ismael
thank you all for the comments,
In the very distant past perhaps God was invoked for the unexplainable, but since Keppler & company, people were perhaps more enthralled by the discoveries they made of the predictable order underlying the working of nature, rather than the belief in capricious actions by God(s). I have a feeling that their expressions of belief in a creator were genuine rather than politically motivated.
rmt1's remarks on the solar system RESONATE with me, as I am fascinated by a model where Solar pulsations can be related to the bode-law planetary spacings. all the things mentioned will change with time and unwind, just like each one of us.
I agree the Originator is neither a meddling (cofty) nor an intervening (Jgnat) entity*. and we and the whole nature have life, existence with all it's consequences. * even if WT teaching about Jehovah says differently
Having had opportunity to live with those that have pushed man's endeavours to the limit, it always strikes us how difficult it is to achieve truly great things.
It is easy and simple as that O.razor to exrapolate to consider a far superior being working and doing the same things at a vastly bigger scale in a far elegant way, and leave no scaffolding, no trace of the worker.
Admire, recognize the work, enjoy the present, the now.
It is easy and simple as that O.razor to exrapolate to consider a far superior being working and doing the same things at a vastly bigger scale in a far elegant way, and leave no scaffolding, no trace of the worker.
Why would we?
That would be the exact opposite of Occam's razor.
speaking for those that are involved in creating, making stuff, developping, maintaining,
it is the EASIER conclusion for them to reach that
a superior, hidden from us maker did the work on the Cosmos, than
to figure out how it made itself from scratch.
Belief in a creator (not God) is high among engineers, technicians.
So who stops to make a cell? It replicates all by itself without intervention.
The reference to Kepler is another appeal to authority. As is your unsubstantiated claim about the (general) beliefs of engineers and technicians. (Demographics of Athiesm)
Prologos said-
speaking for those that are involved in creating, making stuff, developping, maintaining, it is the EASIER conclusion for them to reach that a superior, hidden from us maker did the work on the Cosmos, than to figure out how it made itself from scratch. Belief in a creator (not God) is high among engineers, technicians.
Yeah, well no kidding, just like a plumber sees every repair job (even carpentry) as being fixable with a pipe wrench. Engineers who've never taken high-level biology coursework are the WORST, since they assume that biology follows the same rules of mechanical engineering. They fail to consider that their world-view is biased by seeing everything about them as a product of design, esp if they don't understand that the rules for non-living inorganic matter are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from living (carbon-based) matter. Adam
