Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [RELIGION] creation myths

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Christian M. Cepel wrote:

> > Earth by a supreme being 6,000 years ago.
>
> This is a Mormon figure you're probably quoting: 
> http://www.algonet.se/~daba/lds/endworld.htm (fun read)
>
> The figure I've more often heard was 10,000 years.

This reminds me of Bertrand Russell's reply to the omphalos hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis

    There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world
    sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a
    population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no
    logically necessary connection between events at different times;
    therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future
    can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

So your ideas are "not logically impossible."


> This also doesn't account for those who believe the first 7 days were 
> metaphorical and that they were macro-time, during which the fossil 
> record and aged earth evidence you like to point to occurred.

Why not just drop "God" out of the picture.  It adds nothing.  Nothing but 
a warm feeling in a believer's heart, I suppose.  You believe it because 
you like believing it.

In the early days of religion it was possible to get away with suggesting 
that gods were doing many things: controlling the tides, the seasons, 
pushing the Sun across the sky, creating animals and people and rain and 
thunder, etc., etc., etc.  Now we have scientific explanations for nearly 
everything and most of the gods have been forgotten.  But most of us are 
down to one god or no gods and the one god has his effects in all the 
little places were science has not completed its mission, like in 
explaining the very origin of the universe.

It's funny that people like "first mover" arguments.  How ridiculous they 
are....

Where did the universe come from?

God created it -- he was the "first mover" that started it all and created 
the laws of physics.

OK.  But where did God come from?

He was always there.

Oh.  But why can't we just say that the universe was always there?

Because something had to create it.

Why? ... If nothing had to create God, then why did something have to 
create the universe?

Ummmmm....


"First mover" theology is such a lame excuse to hold on to a little piece 
of God in an era where it is totally unnecessary to evoke God as an 
explanation for anything.

Mike

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