lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (03/19/84)
This is in reply to Gary Benson's Mar 15 posting to net.flame on the subject of "anti-religion". I posted an article to net.philosophy last Feb 12 with the subject line, "Evidence of Creation". In the article I discussed the very point that Gary Benson raises with his Newtonian anecdote about the solar system model. (The anecdote suggests that since we presume a maker of such an artifice, we must presume a maker of the real thing.) My reply is that we identify human artifacts simply by comparison with our experience of natural objects. We readily identify a plastic plant as an artifice, but we do not feel compelled to conclude that since the real plant is so much more complex, it must have been similarly contrived. We all no that it grew from a seed. It is apparent that generations of these plants appear one after the other, strictly through the function of natural law. In fact it is the very crudity of the artificial plant that shows us that it must have been made by humans. Note that crystals occur naturally which show the most exquisite perfection of geometric form. These were once a high mystery, but today we accept their natural occurrence without blinking. It is not perfection per se, but our inability to identify a natural mechanism for the production of an object or system which leads us to conclude that it was created by some living agent. But what of life itself? - that's another question! Getting back to the solar system, in Newton's day almost nothing was known of the wider context in which it is situated. There was no way of picturing its origin from an earlier configuration. The rich picture we have today of galactic and stellar dynamics wasn't formed until this century. Today there is no compelling reason to imagine a special creation of the solar system, any more than there is to imagine one for a river or a mountain. It has been placed in a context from which it can be seen to arise naturally. We can never arrive at the First Cause, and I'll happily join with those who like to moon over the ultimate mystery of existence. However, the particular example posed by Newton in the anecdote no longer stands as an argument for special creation. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew