The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #98124   Message #1941635
Posted By: Amos
19-Jan-07 - 11:44 AM
Thread Name: BS: God's Dicey Cup
Subject: RE: BS: God's Dicey Cup
Well, looky here, Slag. The existence of unanswered questions -- and even unASKed ones -- cannot, by its nature, militate for one or another answer for all those questions at once. In fact, anyone used to untangling complex systems would be a little skeptical about such a proposition UNLESS it could be demonstrated that the interactions defined by the simpler answer, when multiplied by orders of magnitude, actually would or could breed the complex system under consideration.

"There's an awful lot we don't know, so it could be X" in other words is an insufficiently formed proposition. It has no meaningful connections to the phenomena.

If you are proposing that the most meaningful explanation we could come up with is a postulated entity with magical-seeming powers of instantaneous definition of existence, then you have elcted a weak postulate, as defined by its consequences in application. This is the core flaw in all theocrstic answers to sociological, scientific or educational problems. It may seem elegant in theory, but it really sucks in application. It predicts no new objective phenomena which when sought are found to exist, in the way (for example) that relativity predicted red-shift.

Sure, it COULD be God or it COULD be a Flying Spaghetti Monster in another dimension with infinite noodle-tentacles messing about with infinite points in apparent space-time or it COULD be Aether Gremlins in telepathic conspiracy. None of those answers opens the door to further explanations, or applications, and they are therefore un-useful answers. The only beneficial side-effect they provide is grounds for endless rationalization, occasional optimism about the unknown, and a source of great power for those who become theologists and churchmen. Plus a certain self-satisfaction and artificial (and unjustified) righteousness in those who promulgate the solution. I'd rather work out the next law of action and reaction.

Complexity is not grounds for going simple-minded or for hallucinating in the interests of science.

A