From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:49 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Jesse Nowells" wrote > We don't know all the "laws of nature" so how can we presume > that just because something can't be explained by a "law of > nature" that therefore it must be something with an > extra-natural property? We don't "presume [..] it must"; we just provisionally conclude it is supernatural if that's what the available evidence tells us. If new evidence becomes available, our provisional conclusions might change. Science does this all the time. The fact that all empirical conclusions are provisional does not justify asserting that this particular kind of provisional conclusion (supernaturality) should never be believed under any possible circumstances. > If god explains why, why then does god exist? The concept of God can only explain why there is something rather than nothing if it can be shown that God is a self-caused first cause. Nobody has shown this. > > Thus, the universe might merely be the undreamed possible > > dream of no particular dreamer. > > An undreamed dream of no particular dreamer is contradictory. It's no more contradictory than an uncounted possible number with no particular counter. > If it is undreamed then the universe is not a dream. A possible dream is still a possible dream even if it has never been dreamed. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net