From: Brian D Harper <bharper@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu>
[...]
>OK, this might be a place to clarify our differences. Would you say that
this
>provides any evidence for the non existence of a god or gods?
I couldn't work out what your "this" refers to, so I'll read it as
"anything".
Strictly speaking, we can only say that gods are poor explanations of the
facts currently available to us, and therefore there is no rational basis
for accepting the existence of gods.
However, more loosely, I consider the absence of evidence for
gods to be evidence of absence, because I find it hard to believe that
something as significant as a god would leave no evidence.
In any case, in a sense, it doesn't really matter whether gods exist; what
matters is whether they have any effect on anything. I take the view that if
something looks like a duck (a godless universe) and quacks like a duck, I
should treat it as if it is a duck.
[...]
>Thanks for the challenging questions. It was fun thinking, hope I
>won't have to do it too often :).
Thanks to you too. If you're up for another question, I'd like to know what
role you think God played in evolution. Did he just set up the initial
conditions and then let the laws of physics run their course, or did he
intervene along the way? Or something else that I haven't thought of? And
would you call your view "theistic evolution" (the term seems to mean
different things to different people)?
Richard Wein (Tich)
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