[extropy-chat] Re: intelligent design homework

[ben]

 >PS One - just one -  question, i can't resist it: What created god,
 >> then?
 > Maybe, it's a nice story

I'm sorry, but i'm not getting this across, am i?

OK, i'm going to take some good advice, and let you have the last word 
on evolution, as you obviously just don't get it, and it seems beyond my 
power to explain where you are misunderstanding it.


On a completely unrelated topic:
You bring up this 'necessary being' stuff, and it seems to be based on 
some very dodgy logic:

"Why are there necessary beings?

Consider the possibility that it's true that "nothing exists".
Then there exists the truth of that statement, consequently,
necessarily, something exists."

Well, this is obviously not true, so the rest of it is pretty meaningless:

"Consider the possibility that it's true that "nothing exists".
Then there exists ... "

Nothing!

If it's true that nothing exists, then nothing exists, nothing to 
produce the statement, therefore no statement, no truth of it, nothing.

Of course, it's *not* true that nothing exists, so any 'consequences' 
that could be derived from the fact of nothing existing (consequences 
which couldn't, by definition, exist anwyay), are not relevant.

In fact, i think it's fair to say that there is *no* possibility that 
"nothing exists", and that's as far as any consideration of the matter 
can go.

All you have here is one of those paradoxical sentences, along the lines 
of "everything i say is a lie". It can't be true. Effectively, it's a 
useless statement. Any philosophical system built upon it is completely 
illusory. The only sense i can make of this is that it's a (very bad) 
attempt to rationalise a preconceived idea that lacks any logical basis. 
This is supported by the question "Why are there necessary beings?". It 
presupposes that there are such things, and that such a question makes 
any sense in the first place.

 >God is a necessary being, not contingent.  Your question is a category 
error like: "what causes there to be a number six?"

The question "what causes there to be a number six" is a perfectly valid 
question with a perfectly good answer. We invented it, because it's useful.

The number six is an abstraction, not a thing in itself. It's a mental 
tool (part of one, anyway) for understanding the world. This reminds me 
of an old episode of Dr Who, where somebody builds a machine that can 
generate the maths that 'underlies all reality', so therefore can 
produce any kind of reality. Even as a kid, it was obvious to me that 
this was rubbish, because maths *models* reality, it doesn't 'underlie' 
it in any real way, any more than a map produces the territory it 
represents.

You may argue that i'm confusing the map with the territory, that 
'sixness' existed before somebody invented the number. 'Sixness' doesn't 
mean anything on it's own, though. 'Six rocks' does, but 'six' doesn't. 
In other words, rocks existed, then somebody came along and counted six 
of them, thus creating sixness, *in his head*. That's the only place 
sixness exists. I think this is a fundamental problem for a lot of 
people, who confuse what's in their head with what's not. This is 
probably how you get gods in the first place. So, in that sense, i would 
agree with you, that 'god' is in the same category as 'six'.

ben