Subject: Re: JH: The Design Argument Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 08:47:19 -0700 From: "Brian Holtz" To: "Brian Holtz" "Paul Filseth" wrote : > "Brian Holtz" wrote: > > "Rick Gillespie" wrote : > > > > I'm indeed implying that it's unparsimonious to blindly believe > > > > that my hypothetical phenomenon is mysteriously natural and not > > > > supernatural. > > > > > > I need more than just your say so. [Are you saying this is > > > beyond the abilities of some natural agency to perform? > > > How do you know? Is it beyond the abilities of some natural > > > agency to hoax?] > > > > It's a hypothetical, so naturally all you get is "my say so". :-) > > It looks to me like what Rick says he needs more than your > say so to believe is your *non-hypothetical* assertion that calling > your hypothetical event "supernatural" is *more parsimonious*. No, his three follow-on questions (restored in brackets above) make it clear that he was asking how in my hypothetical case I knew that the phenomena were not caused by a natural agency. My answer was that by hypothesis all attempts to show that the phenomenon is due to some natural agency or process meet with failure. Surely after some period (10 years? 10,000 years?) of failed natural explanations, it becomes more parsimonious to call it supernatural than to insist it is mysterious but natural. > > Second, you seem to be a priori ruling out deities as a valid > > explanation. If deities are possible, then "a god did it" is a > > valid explanation for some possible set of evidence. Are you > > saying that deities are not only non-existent but *impossible*? > > All sorts of things might possibly > exist but are not valid explanations for any possible observation even > if they do exist. There's a word for them: "unfalsifiable". I would say that if a thing has no effects that have any possibly observable consequences, that thing does not "exist". Or, if a thing1 "exists" and has observable consequences, but some other "non-existent" thing2 is a simpler explanation and no possible observation can show otherwise, then I would classify thing2 (and not thing1) as existing. (For a detailed definition of existence, see section 1.1.1 Ontology of my book: http://c264141-a.smateo1.sfba.home.com/Thoughts/Thoughts.html#Ontology ) Are you saying that there is no conceivable case in which a deity exists and has observable consequences and is the best explanation for those consequences? -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net