On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 18:12, s. keeling wrote: > Incoming from Paul Morgan: ... > Anything extrauniversal can have no effect on that universe. Variable > is out of scope. That much is knowable.
That's just wordplay. You implicitly define extrauniversal as meaning altogether outside and not intersecting with the universe, so your statement is not knowable but tautological. Paul obviously does not use the word in the same way. The creator by definition does affect the universe he has created and sustains, and so on your terms is not extrauniversal. He is a being of a different order. He is necessarily far beyond his creation (just as you are far beyond anything you are able to create) and no part of his creation is able to understand anything about him which he does not reveal. Most of our knowlege of God comes by revelation. In the creation itself he reveals only his eternal power and deity; demonstrated, among other things, by the immense and beautiful complexity of living systems. Paul cited DNA. On a "higher" level, photosynthesis and blood-clotting are two very complex systems which need every part of them to work and the failure of any one part of which would kill the organism. This kind of irreducible complexity, of which continuing research reveals more and more, reinforces Paley's argument from design, which has demonstrated the truth of creation for at least 2500 years. (Socrates cited the obvious design of the eye, and Cicero employed the argument from design against Lucretius and the Epicureans.) ---------------- On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 19:11, John Hasler wrote: > > 2. The watchmaker is extrauniversal by definition, and anything > > extrauniversal is unknowable. > > Occam's Razor. "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" (plurality is not to be posited without need), or, the simpler hypothesis is to be preferred. That tells nothing about the truth of a proposition; in the end it is only a principle for selecting more elegant arguments. Elegance is not equivalent to truth. Applying Occam's razor to Debian packages, you could rationally claim that their apparent design is a delusion; the idea of a designer is merely an unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses and packages simply evolve by random mutation (bits getting switched by cosmic rays). That is clearly a simpler hypothesis, since it leaves out a multiplicity of unnecessary elements (the Debian maintainers)! -- Oliver Elphick [EMAIL PROTECTED] Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C ======================================== "For I am the LORD your God; ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy." Leviticus 11:44 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]