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From: dnk@cs.mu.OZ.AU (David Kinny)
Subject: Re: Goedel, and the Proof of "god"
Message-ID: <9513313.5481@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
References: <ANSM.95May7184127@term12.tfd.chalmers.se> <D8F866.FG2@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Sat, 13 May 1995 03:10:11 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.physics:121395 comp.ai.philosophy:28051

nfp5e@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Nathan Piazza) writes:

>> And this proposition would be as shaky as the one that "God made the
>> DNA", and before that "God made the first man" and "God resides
>> somewhere on the tops of the clouds", etc. It is not just convenient
>> to put God into the unknown but actually the only place where one can
>> put him, since from what we know there is no God. But the historical
>> experience tells us that each time as the unknown becomes known God
>> has to be moved somewhere else, namely farther into the yet
>> unknown. So, if one claims that God collapses the wave-function one
>> has a great probability to be wrong tomorrow. Thus any reasonable
>> person would not do it.
>> 
>> Andrew

>Shaky and unreasonable is the way of the believer, Andrew.
>Believe it or not, there are millions of reasonable people out
>there who do believe.  How could they be so stupid?  Why would
>they posit such a ridiculous idea?  I think that before you can
>pooh-pooh such mystical malarky, you need to come up with a
>reason so many people believe.

Because many people need the comfort and security provided by
the mistaken notion of a purpose for their existence and an
absolute authority to guide them as to how to behave.
But unfortunately there are no moral or ethical absolutes.  None.

There are as many different notions of god as there are believers.
Most religious belief systems do not merely posit the existence
of a deity, they tell us that this god has quite fixed ideas about
how we should behave.  While this may sometimes be advantageous to
a society, for example the christian doctrine of love may lead to
"better" behaviour, often it is employed as a powerful tool for the
manipulation of thought and behaviour and can be used to justify
atrocities such as those being committed in the Balkans and elsewhere.

>Also, does our scientific knowledge in any way disprove God's
>creation or existence?  Of course not.  Whenever we discover
>something unknown, the Christian would say that we are just
>coming to understand God's methods on Earth.  Whether we
>understand them or not has no bearing on whether God is responsible.
>However, what is unique about the quantum wave-function and the
>heisenberg principle is that as phenomena themselves, they
>dictate to us the limits of our ability to know.  The world of
>quanta is the world of the absolute unknowable, and as such,
>could be labelled as uniquely God's domain.  My point is not
>that this is necessarily true.  I made my response originally to
>someone who was claiming that Heisenberg's principle disproves God,
>which it does not.  More than anything, it makes God more
>psychologically necessary because it slaps us in the face with
>absolute limits.  I would never claim that God was provable,
>but the beauty of God as a psychological construct is that he
>is also not disprovable. 

Sure, god is not dispovable.  But believing in things just because
they can't be disproved is hardly reasonable.  Why not believe
in the healing power of gemstones, or that Jimmy Carter was the
antichrist, or that the UN is a communist conspiracy?

>				--Nathan

David, the atheist (well, pantheist if you prefer)
