esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (11/27/84)
[The Euthyphro Question. Freedom without evil. Occam's Razor: DISPOSABLE] From: teitz@aecom.UUCP > [quote from an article by Richard Carnes omitted] > Why then, do you say that the Being who set up human life in the first > place and put us all here ( as I believe G-D did and does every day ),why > can He not make rules about how to live in his province, which we call the > universe. And if we transgress why should G-D not be able to punish us as > He sees fit. Eliyahu Teitz. It all depends whether the rules this Being makes are fair. The mere fact (if it is a fact) of creating humans does not give anyone (or anyOne) the right to dictate any rules whatsoever to them. As Socrates put it to Euthyphro: "Is a thing good because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is good?" Two millenia later, the score remains: Socrates: 1 Euthyphro: 0. From: walker@noscvax.UUCP (Janet M. Walker) Subject: Re: Why is there evil? > In my opinion: God gave us Free Will in this world. That means we have > the ability, responsibility, freedom to make choices. If we weren't > allowed to make 'bad' choices (i.e. those that hurt ourselves or others) > then we wouldn't really have free will, would we? YES WE WOULD. (See my recent article in net.philosophy.) But look, here's another gaping hole in your argument. I HEREBY SINCERELY REQUEST ANYONE WITH THE POWER TO DO SO TO SO CHANGE ME THAT I NEVER MAKE A BAD CHOICE AGAIN. Tick, tock, tick, tock ... Well, I don't *feel* any different. Are you now going to tell me that I will never make a bad choice again? Are you going to assert that DOING WHAT I ASK, which plainly could never constitute interfering with my free will, in this case interferes with my free will? As Mr. Whipple(sp?) would say: IGOTCHA! From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) > Occam's razor is only usable when you don't care that the explanation > that it indicates is wrong, in the sense that the explanation produces the > observations, but is not in fact what produced the original observations. > In science this is not a problem, because we are only concerned with the > predictive power of the explanation. Why do you assume that being wrong (in your sense) does not affect the predictive power? Anyway, you are being too generous to the Occam fans. Occam's Razor ought to be disposed of -- it just doesn't work like it's supposed to. It's not always true that the best explanation is the one chosen by applying the Razor. (Counterexamples upon request.) > A very clever god could arrange everything so that we would never know he > was there. That's O.K. in science because we don't care. In religion, > we do. The key word is NEVER. If an hypothesis states that we would never know (or have evidence of) its truth, it is not worth considering, be it scientific, religious, or any other kind of hypothesis. --The aspiring iconoclast, Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047 Please send any mail directly to this address, not the sender's. Thanks.