[net.religion] "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

arndt@smurf.DEC (04/20/84)

I've been away.  But now I'm back.  Yea.

Just a few comments that come to mind as I read my mail.

You may remember my posting on the evidence for the existence of God.
Quotes form Paul Davies, GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS.  

Here's some more from Robert Jastrow,THE ENCHANTED LOOM:MIND IN THE UNIVERSE.

"In the scientist's version of Genesis, as in the Bible, the world begins with
the dazzling splendor of the moment of creation.  Few astronomers could have
anticipated that this event - the sudden birth of the Universe - would become
a provern scientific fact, but observations of the heavens through telescopes
have forced them to that conclusion."
                                                                 
"The astronomical proof of a Beginning places scientists in an awkward position
for they believe that every effect has a natural cause, and every event in the
Universe can be explained by natural forces, working in accordance with
physical law. Yet science can find no force in nature that might account for
the beginning of the Universe; and it can find no evidence that the Universe
even existed before that first moment."chapter 1
(look up the idea of singularity in physics)

"Now another mystery interrupts the scientist's story.  According to the fossil
record, simple kinds of life appeared on the earth at some point during the
first billion years of its existence.  Where did these living organisms come
from?  Since the earth's surface was too hot to bear life at the start, this
life must have appeared on our planet later.  Either it was placed here by
the Creator, or it evolved out of nonliving molecules in accordance with the
laws of chemistry and physics.  There is no third way; it must have been one
or the other." (He mentions in a footnote an extraterrestrial source theory)
                   
Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of creation,
but they are driven by the nature of their profession (I would say their
presuppositins) to seek explanations for the origin of life that lie within
the boundries of natural law.  They ask themselves, 'How did life arise out
of inanimate matter?  And what is the probability of that happening?'  And to
their chagrin they have no clear-cut answer, because chemists have never 
succeeded in reproducing nature's experiments on the creation of life out of
nonliving matter. (they have come some way- molecules that are the building
blocks of life- but no cigar!)  Scientists do not know how that happened, and,
furthermore, they do not know the chance of its happening.  Perhaps the chance
is very small, and the appearance of life on a planet is an event of 
miraculously low probability.  Perhaps life on the earth is unique in this
Universe.  No scientific evidence precludes that possibility." chapter 1


etc, etc.  Again,  HE does not opt for Creation.  He is an evolutionist.

But he is not so certain as alot of the people on this net!

He talks, as we ALL must, about degrees of evidence.


From ch. 7  A GUIDING HAND

"According to Darwin, time and innumerable chance variations can work miracles.
But people have remained skeptical of that conclusion, from Darwan's time down
to the present day.  For one thing, there seems to be no direct proof that
evolution can work these miricles.  Darwin's theory suggests that a fish can
change into a man, but no one has ever witnessed that miraculous transformation

If Darwin was correct, man has arisen on the earth as the product of a succe-
sion of chance events occurring during the last four billion years.  Can that
be true?  Is it possible that man, with his remarkable powers of intellect and
spirit, has been formed from the dust of the earth by chance alone?  It is hard
to accept the evolution of the human eye as a product of chance; it is even
harder to accept the evolution of human intelligence as the product of random
disruptions in the brain cells of our ancestors.

My own views on this question remain agnostic, and close to those of Darwin.
The theory of evolution seems complete; it seems to require no forces beyond
the forces known to science.  Yet, when you study the history of life, and
step back to look at this long history with the perspective of several hundred
million years, you see a flow and a direction in it - from the simple to the
complex, from lower forms to higher, and always towards greater intelligence-
and you wonder: Can this history of events leading to man, with its clear
direction, yet be undirected?  Scientists tend to feel that they know the
answer to that question, but their confidence in the completeness of their
knowledge may not be justified."

I'll stop now but you get the idea.  Again, he's not FOR God, but he's
not as certain as a recent graduate student.

More later.

Regards,