God

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Sat, 10 Jan 1998 10:48:40 -0800 (PST)


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On Sat, 10 Jan 1998 davidmusick@juno.com (David A Musick) Wrote:

>there is no rational basis for *rejecting* a theory without
>sufficient evidence against it.

If by "rejecting" you mean not bothering to think about it any more, and I
can't imagine of what else you could mean, then I disagree, contradictory
evidence is only one reason to send an idea to the junk heap. Given the fact
that there are an infinite number of potential theories and only a finite
amount of time, any theory that complicates things, predicts nothing new, and
can never be proven wrong, does not deserve further consideration. Time spent
on a barren theory means time not spent looking for something better.

At any rate, the theists can't say their idea was not given a fair hearing,
it has obsessed billions of people for thousands of years and produced
nothing. There must have a hardware bug in many human minds that makes them
go into an endless loop when exposed to the "God" meme.

>There is a huge variety of God concepts. [...] regarding omnipotence
>or omniscience. *Some* people's Gods have those qualities, but not
>every God concept includes God being omnipotent and omniscient.

It sounds to me like you have a stronger commitment to the word "God" than
the idea of God. If you make the God concept fuzzy enough then I would be
unable to disagree with it, and be even more unable to find a use for it.

>The idea that our universe was created by an intelligent being is
>very attractive to most people.

Apparently, and the intelligent being would doubtless find the idea
attractive to explain His own existence too.

>I prefer not to close my mind prematurely on any subject.

The important word is "prematurely". A totally open mind is no better than a
totally closed one, both are equally sterile. There are no guaranties, all I
can say is that a creative mind uses judgment to sort those ideas that might
produce something interesting from those ideas unlikely to do so.

John K Clark johnkc@well.com

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