On 08/03/07, Julian Bradley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >Hypothesis: earth is round. Evidence: lots.
> It isn't!  Evidence lots.  I don't mean it's flat either, but a
> sphere it ain't!

Oblate spheroid, innit?

> Newton's laws of motion - not laws.

Reminds me of one of this years "Perles du Bac", the unintendedly
humorous statements written by candidates for the French Baccalaureat
examination.
"A body released at a certain height always chooses to fall."

(Other ones that you may like:
"The Amazons were like women, but even more fierce."
"In the Middle Ages good health had not yet been invented."
"François 1st was the son of François 0."
"France is the only place in the world that isn't a foreign country."
"Sea water is used, in particular, to fill the oceans."
"An oval is a circle that is almost round, but not quite."
"Zero is very useful, especially when put after other numbers."
"The law of probabilities is so called because it's not certain that it exists."
"A computer can carry out more complex calculations than the human
brain because it has nothing better to do."
"The more the train slows, the less its speed increases."
"The brain gives the orders, and the other parts of the body are
forced to obey."
The other ones lose in translation.)

Anyway, here's my twopennyworth.

On the subject of intelligent design, I think the fundamentalists are
wasting their time. We shall not find evidence of God in the fossil
record or elsewhere. In my view, God's activity in creation was to
specify the properties of the matter/energy that sprang into existence
at the Big Bang, so that would be astoundingly fruitful. For example,
I believe that the Planck constant is the value it is because God
ordained that it should be such. I do not think badly of those
intelligent and well-adjusted human beings who believe the alternative
hypothesis that it is the value it is because it is that value.

Intelligence is an emergent property of physical matter. It is an
interesting conjecture that there may be a noetic world which we
access through this emergent property of the activity our brains,
which may also be inhabited by disembodied spirits, and where our own
mental activity might continue post mortem.

There might be other powerful inhabitants of that noetic world,
invisible but capable of affecting our mental processes. Such
inhabitants might be a manifestation of  God, but if they were no more
than another emergent property of the universe they would also be
subject to the laws of the universe and could not be the transcending
Creator God described by Christianity.

It seems that there is an inbuilt tendency for human beings to believe
in God (or something very like him). You can argue that this is a big
hint from God to enable his children to find him. Or it may be the
merest accident. You pays your money and takes your choice, but I have
not yet found convincing arguments that prove the matter one way or
the other. Let me quote the well-known work of the religious sceptic
Arthur Hugh Clough.

"There is no God," the wicked saith,
    "And truly it's a blessing,
For what He might have done with us
    It's better only guessing."

"There is no God," a youngster thinks,
    "or really, if there may be,
He surely did not mean a man
    Always to be a baby."

"There is no God, or if there is,"
    The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny
If He should take it ill in me
    To make a little money."

"Whether there be," the rich man says,
    "It matters very little,
For I and mine, thank somebody,
    Are not in want of victual."

Some others, also, to themselves,
    Who scarce so much as doubt it,
Think there is none, when they are well,
    And do not think about it.

But country folks who live beneath
    The shadow of the steeple;
The parson and the parson's wife,
    And mostly married people;

Youths green and happy in first love,
    So thankful for illusion;
And men caught out in what the world
    Calls guilt, in first confusion;

And almost everyone when age,
    Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
    Or something very like Him.

One has to admire people like Dawkins who steadfastly refuse all such
consolation.

-- 
Michael Leuty
Nottingham, UK