Subject:
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Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:18:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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4764 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Physicists and cosmologists are
hard at work on the problem. But whatever the answer - a random quantum
fluctuation or a Hawking/Penrose singularity or whatever we end up calling it
- it will be simple.
Physicists and cosmologists are hard at work on the problem? And the
explanation will be “simple”??? (Sounds like Stangl is up on his Dawkins:-)
The naiveté and arrogance is staggering. Next we’ll here that mathematicans
and statiticians are hard at work resolving the problem of Pi. Suddenly,
expaining the irrational rationally will be a piece of cake (and it will be
simple to boot)
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I don’t know that it’s arrogant or naive, though it might be unjustifiably
optimistic at the moment to call it “simple.” Gould isn’t saying that
Hawking/Penrose will, like God, be magically able to terminate the regress;
their intent is to demonstrate that the regress is non-infinite. I think that
that’s a much smaller goal, though it’s still quite a task. I’d do it, but I
have to paint the staircase and rewire a phone jack. You know how it is...
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I also like this:
Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains
the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in
science’s future ability to explain everything else.
What a crock! How exactly will natural selection explain stuff, and the laws
that make the stuff do stuff?
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But that’s not what Gould is saying, nor is it what natural selection purports
to demonstrate. Natural selection is simply the sieve through which successive
generations are filtered, and it handily explains everything we know about
biological life. It doesn’t explain where life came from (that’s a different
field of study), and it doesn’t explain how physical laws came to be (that’s
likewise a different field), but it does articulate the process by which species
develop over time.
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Thanks, Dave! (not to confuse you with Dave!!)
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Thanks for the clarification.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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| (...) I wish I could help you out, Dave! But I don't know jack about phones. And I'd have to brush up on painting staircases; I hear it's rail difficult. Well, if they ever arrest the regress, it would appear that their work would be able to be used (...) (18 years ago, 26-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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