| Subject: Getting on out there again |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 02/ 6/02 9:21am
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "Interpretation." on 02/ 6/02 8:17am
.
>
>So what if the fossil record is in a particular order?
> Maybe this is just the way nature is. So what if
>there are similarities? Maybe this is just the way
>nature is etc. You see, I can play that game too.
>You can put forth any data you wish that evolution
>explains, and I can explain it away just as easily.
>But the point is that theism explains the data (nature
>consistently operating in mathematical patterns)
>better than atheism, because there is no a
>priori reason to expect it from atheism, whereas
>that's not the case for theism.
>
Let's assume that a card player is given a deck of cards and his game is poker. This card player would like very much to draw a royal flush, but he knows that is going to be rather difficult. In fact, there is no a priori reason to assume that our card player will draw a royal flush, other than the fact that our constiuent elements that make up a royal flush are already in place; here they would be the cards. Our deck isn't stacked, and the shuffle is totally random, yet, much to our card player's surprise, he draws a royal flush. How'd that happen?
Well, it was because the random elements that comprised a royal flush were there, and the mechanism of random processes (here drawing cards) brought about order.
Implicit in Wade's argument seems to be that random causes cannot bring about order; yet, Wade would seem to deny the formation of snowflakes, or the draw of a Royal Flush in poker.
So, let us assume that there is no God, but there is this mechanism of chance and random processes constantly shuffling the elements that are already here for whatever reason. Maybe they always existed, maybe not, but that question isn't really what's being addressed here. Our random friend produces a single microbial organism, who in turn, interacts with other things and chemicals around it, and as our microbe changes and increases in number, the less random forces play a part in our organizisms life, because the chemicals and biological processes it uses are such that there is a much narrower scope of events that can happen to it. In the end, our microbe through manipulations and chemical interactions, produces order on a high scale within a period of about three or four billion years.
As a final point, Wade also seems to assume that God would make nature with order if he were to make it. I see no reason to assume God would want to make nature orderly, or that he would, and to attribute this characteristic to God seems to me to be much like Voltaire's claim that noses were made for reading glasses. Looking at nature, and then attributing what we think we see, or don't see to God already supposes he exists in the first place, and for this, there is no a priori reason (other than confidence in the Bible, which would also supposes God's existance) to suppose that the Christian God exists.
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