Well, here I go: "remarkably" is a subjective judgement; my personal answer is 'no' (this may or may not be influenced by my background as physicist).... no one has gone on record to say whether the earth is “remarkably placed” in the universe
??? Cuba - Libya - Syria - Iraq - Iran - North Korea ???or, is the “axis of evil” just a universal coincidence?
I fully agree with this (as a physicist, thoug I might be missing something as an experimentalist).I hope know one thinks the idea of a multiverse [...] is in any way scientific
As for Hawking I thought he did not want to be buried in a church...
That is what bothers me most: that there are scientists around who do not realise that this is not science, for this very reason.To talk about multiple other universes [...] is fantasy [...] Furthermore it is untestable, and unobservable.
As for Hawking I thought he did not want to be buried in a church...
This summer, I didn't even think of it before I almost stumbled over his grave when leaving the Evensong ... not that there is any physical (haha) obstacle, but everyone in front of me walked on it in a kind of exit procession. Nobody else seemed to notice. I hope Hawking liked the sung prayer, maybe it is designed as part of his purgatory experience ...He wasn't; he was buried in a tourist attraction.
Does one claim that Westminster Abbey is a tourist attraction on the basis of Yes, Prime Minister?
What about God? Do you have a god?
Explain.
An all-powerful being.
A force underlying everything.
Electromagnetic forces underlying all.
No, l mean an intelligent force
God.
Electromagnetic force intelligent.
Matter, space, time: all the same.
All the same?
Different names.
lnfinity.
lnfinity is God.
God infinity.
All the same.
All the same.
very subtle form
Ya caught me, Salieri!the majority of congregants are tourists (after all, you can get in free during a service)
How about returning to calling them just "possibilities" or "alternatives"?As for the many-somethings theories (I hesitate to call them 'universes' or 'worlds' though those are the traditional epithets)
This makes perfect sence to me - except for the point, how can anyone deny (especially, along the way, his/her own!) human personality?... many, indeed I would wager most, advocates of such theories are motivated by (or, minimally, committed to) a denial of the real existence of human persons
Still such danger is present, especially when this world-view is propagated to the general public; which makes it indeed problematic in ways that geocentrism and young-earth creationism are not.... he does not [believe in personal identity and its connection with moral responsibility], which, I hasten to add, does not make him an immoral person, just wrong about the underlying nature of morality
How about returning to calling them just "possibilities" or "alternatives"?
Isn't this just a semantic game...?
none of my dear collegue scientists will ever convince me that my own 'selfness' is some kind of "illusion" (to whom???) especially when on the other hand all possibilities and alternatives are claimed to be even 'real'.
...problematic in ways that geocentrism and young-earth creationism are not
The existence of life as a physical phenomenon appears ludicrously improbable under modern physical theories. The cosmological anthropic principle is the idea that the reason we observe such an improbable universe is because it is only in such an improbable universe that anyone would be around to observe it. Perhaps an infinite number of universes exist; but we find ourselves in a very unlikely corner of a very unlikely one, an unlikely corner capable of supporting life, because it isn’t possible for us to exist in any of the other universes or life-hostile corners of this universe.
Whatever one may think of it as an argument for the plausibility of this or that metaphysic, the cosmological anthropic principle is an interesting if tautological observation about the logic of our existence: whatever else can be said about this world, it is exactly this world which I should expect to see, since it is exactly this world which gave rise to me. There may be other worlds than this one, but the one I will definitely find myself in is the one upon which my existence is logically contingent.
The Problem of Evil can be stated in many ways, but one way is as the following question: How is it possible for evil to occur in a world created by an infinitely powerful, all-knowing, infinitely good God? It is a very human and natural question, and anyone who cannot relate to it as an emotive response to evil and suffering is probably, at the least, the odd man out at parties. But I don’t think it holds up as a logical matter.
The cosmological anthropic principle demonstrates that only this world is compatible with my existence. Many worlds are no doubt logically compatible with an infinitely good God’s existence, but only this exact one is compatible with my existence. If not for some very precise and extraordinarily unlikely events, many of which are contingent upon the evil of this world, I would not exist at all. If this world is logically incompatible with God’s existence and any other is logically incompatible with mine**, then God’s existence and my existence are, as a logical matter, mutually exclusive. To assert the problem of evil is literally to consign onesself to Hell: to assert that it is impossible for God to love me enough to tolerate the existence of evil.
The Problem of Evil is a-rational emotion masquerading as reason. The Incarnation and the Passion make it infinitely so.
[**] Some might object that an infinitely powerful God could have made me without making this world or allowing any of the evil to occur which has occurred. It seems to me that when someone says that, he is equivocating on the word “me”. God could have made some other being, to be sure, but only I am me.
So WHO created the AOE?!?!
The name was justifiably melodramatic, given that it threatened our established view of the universe.
Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”
This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”
Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?
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