Subject: Re: Music, religion, etc.
From: Robbie (shok@netcom.com)
Date: Sun Jan 09 2000 - 05:48:49 EST
you said:
<< However, I will point out that William of Occam was a monk :) >>
Thank you for pointing that out. I already knew it, but thank you
anyway. ;)
<< Contact, the movie, terribly butchered the use of Occam's razor. >>
Incidentally, I did not learn of Ockham's Razor from Contact. I learned
of it from a Physics textbook. And it wasn't presented much
differently.
<< To be honest, a simple belief that God Created the Universe is much
less complicated than a Big Bang theory that doesn't account for all
the matter in the universe (or the uneven distribution of background
radiation) or the more exotic forms of physics that probably no one on
this list is capable of being conversant in. >>
That's mighty debatable. The introduction of an all-powerful,
all-knowing entity that exists without reason, and presumably without a
beginning or an end adds what one may call a shitload of complexity.
Perhaps the current scientific understanding of the Universe's birth is
a bit shaky, but the assumption that nothing exists or operates outside
of some basic Universal laws and that nature brought itself into
existence in compliance with these laws is much less complicated than
the assumption of the existence of the aformentioned deity.
<< You really missed half the point of the movie, you know...Jodie
Foster's character had an experience incommunicable to those she spoke
with after returning from her trip. Almost all the evidence spoke
against Jodie Foster's experience...there was very little or no "proof"
that she spoke to alien life forms. And as a result she had to concede
her empiricism was much too shallow to account for Real Life... >>
Thanks for the summary, but I hadn't missed that. And in the end, she
never announced a change in her Atheism. And incidentally, the movie
was adapted from a novel written by Carl Sagan, noted astronomer,
scientist, rational person, nice guy, and perhaps one of the most
blatantly and forwardly Atheist individuals from the past century.
cheers,
-robbie
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