RE: [asa] Because of us - Steve Fuller's anthropic principle - Darwin's original sin

Hi Murray,
You are right. However, humans cannot conceive of nothingness and even less so to think of God bringing the whole thing into being, initial conditions and time simultaneously. This would still place God in a “medium,” which is clearly incorrect. The concept of the Christian God is indeed humanely almost impossible to fathom.
My main point was that the notion of chance, as being a possible human way to understand our existence in time, would mean from God’s perspective, if I am be so presumptuous to say, not chance at all but certitude.
All theists can use this view but the support for it cannot come from our understanding of merely the physical aspect of Nature but we must bring in the totality of the human experience.
In any case, the question boils down to if there is intelligence behind the whole of reality or not. I say yes, since human intelligence is required to study Nature and the existence of intelligence, and for that matter, life, human rationality, etc., cannot be reduced to the purely physical.
Blessings to you too,
Moorad

________________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Murray Hogg [muzhogg@netspace.net.au]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:12 AM
To: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Because of us - Steve Fuller's anthropic principle - Darwin's original sin

Hi Moorad,

I'm a bit cool on the below.

Let's allow that there was no "before the beginning" in which a "front loader" might set the relevant physical conditions, it's doesn't follow that those conditions might not come into being at the same time as the physical universe (and hence time itself).

All you've pointed to, in my opinion, is an easily resolved issue with some formulations of the front-loading hypothesis - formulations which are no more problematic than claims that God "foreknew" that he was going to create the universe before he did so.

Blessings,
Murray

Alexanian, Moorad wrote:
> Clearly, the notion of “front-loader” cannot be a reference to the Christian God. Front-loading presupposes that at the “beginning” some conditions were set up that determined the future development of the system. However, God does not exist in time and so that notion cannot be correct. Therefore, God must have known completely the temporal development and so the notion of chance from God’s perspective is nonsensical. Humans, who live in time, may interpret reality by invoking chance but that is human ignorance rather than ingenuity.
>
> Moorad

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Received on Wed Apr 29 11:04:04 2009