- - - - -
 Jan12/90 22:26
 23:11) Brian Holtz: Relying on that which we have no reason to believe exists
  can ultimately be only a weakness. 
 - - - - -
 Jan12/90 22:51
 23:13) Brian Holtz: Ok, Gary, here's just a few items from the (necessarily
  infinite) list of things which we cannot prove do _not_ exist: God, Santa
  Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Great Pumpkin, black swans,
  flying pigs, and Baal.  Now, what weakness am I revealing in assuming that
  these (and the infinitely many other on the list) things do not exist? 
 - - - - -
 Jan13/90 00:01
 23:15) Brian Holtz: Do it!  Please!  _Prove_ that Santa Claus doesn't exist! 
  You can't, of course, because you can't prove an existential negative.  For
  instance, if I say: "Santa Claus lives at the north pole, but can't be seen
  there except by those who truly believe in him.  Every Christman morning, he
  distributes gifts to all the children in the world who are not naughty but
  rather nice, so for any given child, if he doesn't receive a gift from Santa
  Claus, it's because he is naughty in his heart of hearts."
 
  You have _utterly_ no way of _proving_ that such an entity does not exist. 
 - - - - -
 Jan13/90 21:48
 23:21) Brian Holtz: Michael, my whole point is that "proof" is far too strong
  a condition for both non-existence _and_ existence.  Most philosophers agree
  that it is impossible even to prove the _existence_ (never mind the
  non-existence) of any particular thing.  So when Gary gravely says "There is
  no proof that God does not exist", the natural response is "So what?  That
  can be said of _any_thing!". 
 
  However, there are different levels of evidence to support the existence of
  various things.  For example, there is lots of evidence to suggest that,
  say, George Bush exists.  And again, there is next to no credible evidence
  that some God exists. 
 - - - - -
 Jan13/90 22:51
 23:26) Brian Holtz: Brett, if your book is brimming over with evidence for
  the divinity of Jesus, how about spilling some into this item? 
 
  By the way, if the evidence for Jesus' divinity is so good, why is it that
  historians uniformly avoid endorsing this finding?  Why aren't physicists
  researching the turing of water into wine?  In short, why do all the people
  whose business it is to objectively uncover the truth decline to take the
  whole God business seriously?  Must be a secular humanist conspiracy, I
  guess. 
 - - - - -
 Jan16/90 02:36
 23:47) Brian Holtz: Isn't it pretty clear that a self-derived love of
  humanity is "better" than a fear( of God)-derived love? 
 
  Saying atheism could be a crutch to avoid God's wishes _assumes_ that God
  exists in the first place.  Saying belief in God is a crutch doesn't make
  that sort of assumption.  Res non multiplicandum est. 
 
  Brett, I can't say I'm impressed by the two predictions you marshalled. 
  Just what does it mean to predict that "the way of the sea" would be made
  "glorious"?  As for "a son is given", that prediction could be automatically
  fulfilled as soon as, say, some zealous carpenter's son starts to take his
  Torah studies too seriously. 
 
  Eric, Toynbee wasn't a professional historian in the sense that I meant. 
  I'm not talking about people who make their living writing for the
  (however-educated) layman, but about those whose job it is to convince their
  skeptical colleagues of their findings under the harsh light of peer review. 
  Sure, plenty of historians and scientists go to church, but how many of them
  ever bother trying to convince their professional colleagues of the evidence
  that you say has led them to believe in what is allegedly the most momentous
  event in the history of the universe?  Where are the history journal
  articles that marshall your evidence?  If the evidence can stand up to the
  toughest scrutiny -- peer review --, why doesn't it show up in academia? 
 
  Folks, the behavior of a believer tells us nothing about the validity 
 - - - - -
 Jan16/90 02:36
 23:48) Brian Holtz: of the belief.  The behavior of Northern Irish and the
  Crusaders has nothing to do with whether Jesus was divine.  If Hitler had
  said E=mc^2, would that refute Einstein? 
 - - - - -
 Jan19/90 02:20
 23:70) Brian Holtz: No, Brett, it was merely recorded decades later that the
  disciples _claimed_ to have put their hands in his wounds, etc.  Fervency of
  belief does _notlHLv0`)____ make the belief true.  Hundreds gave their life
  for Jim Jones; was he divine? 
 
  Jim, count me in as another skeptical materialist. 
 
  N N, if you toss out the principle of parsimony, then _any_ theory is true
  as long as it enumerates the events it is supposed to _explain_.  Tossing
  out parsimony is epistemological suicide. 
 
  I didn't say loving humanity is better than loving some god; I said that
  loving humanity for humanity's sake is better than loving humanity for fear
  of god (or anything else). 
 - - - - -
 Jan20/90 20:17
 23:76) Brian Holtz: Brett, do any of those sources other than the Bible claim
  that Jesus was resurrected?  If they had, I think I'd have heard of it. 
 
  N N, rejecting parsimony is silly.  Without it, you have to equate, for
  example, the law of gravity with the-law-that-lists-all-the-apples-that-
  ever-have-or-will-fall-off-trees-and-hit-people-in-the-head as equally
  plausible. 
 - - - - -
 Jan20/90 21:00
 23:78) Brian Holtz: I can explain those events in one word: zealotry.  It is
  a commonplace that if people really want or need to believe something, they
  can sometimes make themselves do so. 
 - - - - -
 Jan21/90 00:35
 23:83) Brian Holtz: Brett, it wasn't the Roman empire's job to debunk the
  claims of every mystic's zealous followers; on the contrary, the Romans
  probably had plenty of room for one more local god.  Paul's conversion is no
  more a mystery than yours -- unless, of course, you claim to have stuck your
  hand in some resurrected guy's wound.  And I never said that the Christian
  martyrs "knew [their faith] to be false", I just said that it's quite common
  for people to believe arbitrarily strongly in things that aren't true.  (You
  keep saying you don't take vociferousness of belief in the face of adversity
  as evidence, but that's the kind of evidence you keep dredging up.  It's
  getting kind of monotonous....) 
 - - - - -
 Jan21/90 23:27
 23:89) Brian Holtz: ID, who around here do you hear "proving" God doesn't
  exist, with the principle of parsimony or anything else?  I'm not proving
  God doesn't exist; I'm just trying to show that there's no reason to believe
  he does, and therefor that parsimony argues that we shouldn't so believe. 
 
  N N, without parsimony you have no way to reject the apple-list law in favor
  of the law of gravity.  Both explain the phenomena of falling apples equally
  well, but the law of gravity is far simpler, and parsimony requires we favor
  it.  Now, if you're going to maintain that the law of gravity and the
  list-of-all-apples-that-have-fallen-or-will-ever-fall law are are equally
  credible (i.e., you reject parsimony), I'm satisfied that I've reduced your
  position to the absurd, and that none of our readers would join your
  position. 
 - - - - -
 Jan21/90 23:56
 23:91) Brian Holtz: 1) No one said simpler theories are "necessarily" true;
  that's a blatant straw man. 
 
  2) Parsimony doesn't apply to theories with different explanatory power.  If
  you have a simpler alternative to, say, the theory of relativity, that
  nevertheless had the same explanatory power, I can guarantee you this year's
  Nobel prize in physics.  While your theory wouldn't "necessarily" be "truer"
  than relativity, we wouldn't really have any way of knowing if it weren't,
  and so the prize would be yours. 
 - - - - -
 Jan22/90 00:26
 23:93) Brian Holtz: Yes, I'd choose the simpler theory, all other things
  being equal.  Wouldn't you?  (Hint: you still haven't told me whether you
  think gravity is a better law than the list of apples fallen/to fall.)
 
  You're not arguing me into a corner; you're just a) not answering my
  questions, and b) questioning every well-accepted principle of epistemology
  I mention and asking me to define every term I mention.  I don't mind (b),
  but (a) is a little uncool. 
 
  "Explanatory power" is exactly what it sounds like; it's just one of the
  "all other things" that need to be equal for parsimony to apply.  If two
  theories have equal "explanatory power", that means that they both
  predict/explain the same phenomena, so that they never give different
  answers to the same experimental question. 
 - - - - -
 Jan27/90 21:33
 23:111) Brian Holtz: Sure, John, I can imagine a god that conspired to trip
  up our reason.  The problem is, you could never show _through reason_ that
  that situation obtained. 
 
  ID, your analogy between parsimony and your friend George is silly. We all
  know that _people_ can pronounce whatever theories they want, and you're
  using that psychological baggage to imply that parsimony can be as
  capricious as any person can be.  Parsimony is a _method_, not an authority. 
  Still, the answers to your questions are "yes": a) I put stock in parsimony,
  b) science listens quite intently to parsimony, and c) parsimony always is
  held up in court. 
 
  So, ID, I guess you're pretty much gutless, since you won't answer my
  question: is gravity a better law than the-list-of-apples-fallen/to-fall? 
  Note that I'm not asking which of the two laws can be granted apodictic
  certitude; I'm just asking whether you're willing to publicly say that
  they're equally valid laws. 
 
  Who holds that "man IS god", Brett?  Remember, "god" is any supernatural
  being with the power to punish and reward humans.  What I think you really
  mean is that "psychology" holds that man should be the creator of his own
  value system.  Creating values is not the same thing as being divine.  As
  for "spirit guides", how are they any different from your white-bearded old
  guy enthroned in the clouds? 
 - - - - -
 Jan29/90 00:06
 23:121) Brian Holtz: Ok, Brett, I'll grant you that Shirley Maclain and the
  Star Wars Force are as kooky as, say, your religion, but I don't hear
  _those_ being taught in public schools, either.  As for the spirit world,
  it's interesting to hear you say that it exists, but that dialing out to it
  is against the policies of GT&T.  What is god afraid we'll hear from these
  spirits? 
 
  Bryan, of course I've heard of of all those divine attributes, but they
  aren't attributes that plenty of mortal kings haven't shared.  God only
  worries me if he is both a) in the reward and punishment business, and b) is
  supernatural -- i.e., I can't nuke him or whatever if he tries to send me to
  hell.  Only then does god present any ethical questions different from those
  posed by mortal powers. 
 
  Nancy, if god is love, why not just scratch one of those two words out of
  the dictionary?  I vote for scratching "god".  And if being weak is being
  human, and we agree that believing in things for no good reason is a
  weakness, then why not believe in everything we can imagine, to be as human
  as possible? 
 
  Brett, I'll just keep asking you this until you answer it: if "it is no more
  'objective' to disbelieve in something than it is to believe in something",
  which of the following do you believe in: the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny,
  Santa Claus, the Great Pumpkin, Zeus, ...? 
 - - - - -
 Feb18/90 23:03
 23:327) Brian Holtz: Brett (:122), you say "if one remains 'objective' about
  the easter bunny in middle age, he has a problem."  Why can't I say the same
  about God? 
 
  Michael (:124), I wasn't talking about evidence in :121; I was talking about
  Brett's position that "it is no more 'objective' to disbelieve in something
  than it is to believe in something".  I'm just making sure that after I've
  debunked the few scraps of so-called evidence for God's existence, no one
  will turn and say "well, why _not_ believe?".  Again, you can ask that
  question about the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the Great
  Pumpkin, Zeus, ... 
 
  If you want to see a mortal king who can change the thoughts of another,
  just emigrate to any tyranny and start publishing bad things about the
  tyrant.  His secret police will be glad to change your mind for you. 
 
  Bryan (:127), my taking "god" to mean any supernatural being with an
  inclination to reward and punish us is hardly "drivel".  For the purposes of
  ethics, a god is only relevant if we can't nuke him and he cares how we act. 
  That he is a patron of some craft, or has any of the other attributes you
  mentioned in :116, is irrelevant. 
 
  ID (:130), it's hardly a "sidetrack" to try to get you to own up to the
  consequences of your position.  I said parsimony requires we not believe in
  God if there's no good evidence.  You said parsimony isn't infallible.  I
  said it's the best thing we got, and asked you "is 
 - - - - -
 Feb18/90 23:03
 23:328) Brian Holtz: gravity a better law than
  the-list-of-apples-fallen/to-fall?" to see if you agreed.  I don't blame you
  for not answering, since your only move is to concede the validity of
  parsimony or to assert an absurdity. Checkmate. 
 - - - - -
 Feb19/90 19:35
 23:334) ID w039: Mate-check, Brian Holtz.  See :95 for all that's necessary
  to say about parsimony. 
 - - - - -
 Feb21/90 22:34
 23:350) Brian Holtz: Bryan, show the response in which I stipulated what kind
  of "ethical systems" "one can" or cannot "construct".  I say "reward and
  punish", you say "affect" -- fine.  My point remains the same: a "god" is
  ethically no different from a king if she isn't supernatural, and a "god" is
  ethically no different from physics if her effects on us aren't related to
  the ethical nature of our thoughts and actions.  How hard can it _be_ for
  you to understand the distinction between the ethically relevant and
  ethically irrelevant traits of gods? 
 
  Brett, I _know_ there's a "ton" of evidence "for the New Testament"; I have
  a few ounces of such evidence on my bookshelf.  What there _isn't_ any
  evidence for is the New Testament's accounts of supernatural events.  Just
  because a book gets some names and dates right doesn't mean that its ghosts
  stories are ipso facto true. 
 
  ID, for the zillionth time: nobody claims parsimony delivers apodictic
  certainty. What I claim is that parsimony provides good reason to favor
  certain beliefs over other competing beliefs.  You clearly agree, or you
  would have already cheerfully explained why the law of gravity is no better
  than a catalogue of all past and future gravitational happenings. 
 
  Brett, Evan is wrong that the main difference between the Bible and other
  classical histories is the psychology of the authors.  Rather, the main
  difference is that the supernatural events described in the 
 - - - - -
 Feb21/90 22:34
 23:351) Brian Holtz: Bible are taken (for no good reason) to be true, while
  other classical texts either do not describe supernatural events or are not
  believed insofor as those particular accounts.  The accounts of kings and
  wars and such in _both_ the Bible and other classical histories bear up well
  in the light of archeology, political science, physiology, and even physics.
  The accounts of resurrections and miracles and
  fortune-telling-from-chicken-guts _don't_ bear up, and we ought not to
  believe them. 
 - - - - -
 Feb22/90 23:27
 23:366) Brian Holtz: ID, as I already explained (and which you never
  answered), comparing an epistemological principle to a person is silly,
  because persons have a capriciously free will and principles don't.  Your
  attempt to taint a methodological principle with the inconstancy of
  (calculating, scheming, willful) people is utterly transparent. 
 
  Who says we've "transcended the stage" where non-deductive inference is
  "appropriate"?  If you're arguing that parsimony applies to all explanations
  except those invoking God, you're going to have to justify your exception. 
 
  Brett, I'm not saying that it is metaphysically impossible for any miracles
  to have ever occurred.  I'm saying that there's no good reason to believe
  they _did_ occur.  The argument goes more like "if we have the completely
  uniform experience that nothing even remotely supernatural is reproducibly
  happening today, then we ought not to pick out of hundreds one exaggerated
  account asserting the supernatural and hold it up as true".  I propose to
  "stop up" the "great hole in history" "ripped" by your Resurrection the same
  way I stop up the holes pricked by Zeus, Odin, Ra, and Allah: they are
  myths. 
 - - - - -
 Feb24/90 20:40
 23:371) Brian Holtz: That's a pretty fair summary, Tim.  My only difference
  with it is that I don't suggest that "any" hypothesis is better than a
  miracle, but rather that hypotheses like myth, mystical zeal, etc. are
  better -- they explain the New Testament's god as well as all many others:
  Ra, Allah, Zeus, Odin, ... 
 
  I'd also point out that the parts of the Bible that are confirmed by
  archeology are the pedestrian secular parts.  There is zero archeological
  evidence for supernatural goings-on in Palestine 2000 years ago. 
 - - - - -
 Feb25/90 21:17
 23:386) Brian Holtz: Tim, you are simply wrong that either the Bible was
  divinely inspired or was a result of conscious deception.  It's not very
  hard to imagine how mystical, superstitious people could work up a zeal that
  would lead them to unconsciously exaggerate and embellish their story.  Tell
  me, Tim: do you think that every religion that makes claims contradictory to
  Christianity's is based on deception?  How _do_ all you Christians explain
  away the other religions, and why doesn't your explanation apply to
  Christianity? 
 - - - - -
 Feb26/90 20:59
 23:391) Brian Holtz: Brett, what is so special about a cross that it makes
  Jesus's claims true?  Why don't the golden tablets of the Book of Mormon
  make _it_ true? Why doesn't Muhammad's alleged ascension make the Koran
  true? 
 - - - - -
 Feb27/90 20:32
 23:396) Brian Holtz: Brett, I agree that the facts you list are indeed facts;
  what I want to know is why the equally-remarkable facts surrounding many
  other religions aren't taken by you as evidence for supernatural goings-on. 
  My point is that whatever explanation you give for other religions is likely
  to be the explanation _I_ give for not only other religions _but also_
  Christianity.  Would you please tell me how you explain the popularity of
  other religions? 
 - - - - -
 Feb28/90 22:50
 23:405) Brian Holtz: Tim, what's the difference between Jesus's alleged
  resurrection and the alleged visions and assumption of Mohammed?  If you are
  "not afraid of the facts", then why are you afraid of saying why the claims
  of Christianity are better than those of Islam? 
 
  If it's "eyewitnesses" you want, what's wrong with Mohammed and Joseph
  Smith? They recorded their experiences much sooner after the alleged events
  than did the authors of the New Testament. 
 - - - - -
 Mar01/90 18:00
 23:424) Brian Holtz: Brett, for your facts 2, 3, and 4 (about the
  psychological states and transformations of the apostles) we have only the
  New Testament as a source, and the New Testament authors could very well
  have exaggerated the salutory psychological effects of the alleged
  resurrection.  The rest of your facts are no more remarkable than those
  surrounding the origin of any other zealously mystical mass movement (e.g.,
  Islam). 
 
  I don't think much of your distinction between one alleged eyewitness
  (Mohammed, Joseph Smith) and many. Do you really believe _anything_ that is
  attributed to a handful of eyewitnesses by authors who are as subjectively
  involved as the New Testament's? 
 
  Tim, is your experience and imagination so constricted that you can't see
  how a mystical zeal could lead people to report as happening the things that
  they really wished had happened?  For example: I sure hope you're a
  Catholic, because the Madonna appeared at Fatima (by your evidentiary
  standards) and essentially endorsed the Roman Catholic Church.  The "best
  explanation" is _not_ to believe whatever any group of zealots think they
  experienced; the _best_ explanation is to dismiss all such claims that
  aren't accompanied by objective evidence. 
 
  Brett, if you've been reduced to believing any myth that wasn't debunked at
  its nominal inception, then I can tell we're almost done here.  What motive
  would the Roman and Jewish authorities have had to debunk an incipient sect
  that a) lost all Jewish mass appeal after 
 - - - - -
 Mar01/90 18:00
 23:425) Brian Holtz: Jesus's death and b) emphasized rendering unto Caesar in
  this life?  Christianity _was_ a big deal among the Jews up until it's
  leader got himself killed; after that, it _wasn't_ a big deal. 
 
  Did someone make off with the body?  It sure seems more likely than this
  whole god-hypothesis, which you apparently only need to explain some
  millenia-old writings by a handful of Palestinian zealots. The disciples had
  _everything_ to gain from interpreting Jesus's missing body as a miracle: it
  kept their world from coming apart.  It needn't have been an apostle who
  removed the body, so there needn't have been a "plot".  At any rate, the
  only accounts of Jesus's missing body, his tomb being heavily guarded, the
  psychological transformations of the apostles, and Jesus's subsequent
  appearances are from the New Testament, so they aren't "facts" that require
  explanation. 
 
  It doesn't matter _how_ many apostles were tortured for Christianity; zeal
  does not guarantee true belief.  In the last ten years several hundred
  thousand Iranian zealots have marched into minefields and nerve gas for
  Islam -- does that make the claims of Islam an iota more believable? 
 - - - - -
 Mar02/90 19:19
 23:431) Brian Holtz: Brett, the apostles were _also_ "the people best in a
  position to" feel better by believing (even sincerely) that Jesus had risen
  from the dead.  Sure, multiple eyewitnesses are better than one, but their
  alleged testimony doesn't mean much when it is recorded by authors as
  subjectively involved as the New Testament's.  There's every difference in
  the world between eyewitness "testimony" recorded in a subjective account
  and having eyewitnesses questioned in an objective forum. 
 
  There are "big deals" and there are big deals, Brett.  By the Bible's own
  account, Jerusalem's Jews were demonstrating for Jesus's coronation.  After
  he was killed there wasn't nearly the threat to public order that there was
  before, and -- what is the main point here -- there wasn't any sizeable body
  of believers soon after the crucifixion that the authorities might have
  needed to demoralize with Christ's corpse.  Sure, the few remaining
  believers were persecuted; _all_ such rabble-rousers were. 
 - - - - -
 Mar03/90 20:18
 23:434) Brian Holtz: ID, I'm an expert on _everything_; wasn't that obvious? 
  ;-) 
 - - - - -
 Mar15/90 17:39
 23:458) Brian Holtz: Tim, the only source you have for the post-crucifixion
  appearance of Jesus to the Eleven "in the room in Jerusalem" is the Bible. 
  The only source you have for "Peter and others perform[ing] miracles" is the
  Bible.  The only source you have for Thomas's skepticism being overcome by
  Jesus's reappearance is the Bible.  The only source you have for the
  disciples being "scared", their hopes "blown", and Jesus's subseqent
  appearance to them is the Bible. 
 
  Try to understand this: you can't say "The Bible says X, and the only way
  for X to be true is for the Bible to be true, so the Bible must be true". 
  Isn't the fallacy clear to you?  We skeptics' hypothesis does _not_ "include
  the claim that miracles don't happen"; we simple require independent
  _evidence_ of miracles.  Sure, if there were no evidence either way you
  could presume John Mayer not to exist, but you would start to look pretty
  silly if you maintained that presumption after, say, he conversed with you
  on M:S, or punched you in the face.  In such a case, we _would_ have
  evidence John Mayer exists; where is the evidence that your _god_ exists? 
 - - - - -
 Mar17/90 21:00
 23:470) Brian Holtz: Brett, the only "facts" that might need explaining by
  "wishful thinking" are your claims about miracles and the psychological
  transformation of the Apostles, _both_ of which _do_ "rely on the Bible as
  the sole source."  Since the Bible is a work of exhortation, any claims it
  makes (especially about miracles) that can't be independently substantiated
  _need no_ "explanation".  As for why the Romans didn't produce the body, you
  still haven't answered my explanation (431):
 
  After he was killed there wasn't nearly the threat to public order that
  there was before, and -- what is the main point here -- there wasn't any
  sizeable body of believers soon after the crucifixion that the authorities
  might have needed to demoralize with Christ's corpse.  Sure, the few
  remaining believers were persecuted; _all_ such rabble-rousers were. 
 - - - - -
 Mar24/90 23:19
 23:515) Brian Holtz: Tim, the "documents" from your "eyewitnesses" don't
  count as evidence, since the authors of these polemics were completely
  biased.  You can keep ignoring this point if you like, but I'll keep making
  it just the same. 
 
  If an "eyewitness account" makes breathless reports of the supernatural as
  part of its heavy-handed effort to win converts, then the "hypothesis" that
  holds the account to be a perhaps sincere but nevertheless almost certainly
  false piece of zealous exaggeration and misinterpretation is the
  "hypothesis" that makes the most sense, no matter _when_ it was "dreamed
  up". 
 - - - - -
 Mar25/90 22:02
 23:519) Brian Holtz: Tim, my worldview does not merely suppose that
  "supernatural" events don't occur; it supposes that the only events that
  should be believed to have occurred are those for which there is credible
  _evidence_.  If your only evidence is the breathless claims of a handful of
  zealots, then it's far simpler to believe they were deluded, or
  exaggerating, or misinterpreting things, or all three, than to believe that
  the god-less system of theories that does so well explaining everything else
  should be tossed out on the basis of the ravings of a few people from
  antique Palestine.  Believe me, there's a lot of room between the claims of
  the Gospels and "hitting everyone on Earth over the head" for a deity to get
  her point across.  Why couldn't this Jesus have slipped a little cosmology
  into a sermon -- like, say, Planck's constant to 6 or 7 places -- to make
  his authenticity plain to later generations?  Why did he make it so easy to
  believe that his followers are just another handful of crackpots? 
 
  As for "facing death", I already am _doing_ that.  By my thinking, I have at
  most 60 years or so before it's lights out on Brian Holtz -- forever. Gone.
  Finis.  Even if I'm wrong and you're right, then at least I've got an
  _eternal_ lease on a spot in Hell, where -- if I could at least remember my
  earthly life -- I'd most likely count myself happier than if I no longer
  existed at all.  No, your well-intended threats of eternal _anything_ are a
  better deal than what I think I've got coming. 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 01:07
 23:546) Brian Holtz: Well, I went to Dr. Bradley's talk on scientific
  evidence for god.  It was pitched at a pleasantly surprisingly high level. 
  One argument was that the ranges of values for the universe's physical
  constants are very narrow for life as we know it to be sustainable, and yet
  those constants are indeed within those ranges, which implies that someone
  set them accordingly.  The other argument was that bootstrapping of life out
  of the primordial soup is too improbable for the process not to have been
  helped.  In the question period he suggested that just as there is
  scientific evidence for a Designer, there is historical evidence for Jesus's
  divinity. 
 
  The examples of physical constants he used from areas I have knowledge in
  were either easily explainable or are turning out not to be coincidences at
  all. 
 
  1) He said that in the laws of gravitational and electric attraction, which
  both decrease with a power of the distance over which they operate, it is
  remarkable that the power is exactly 2.0 to as many decimal places we can
  measure.  This is no coincidence at all.  Electric attraction and gravity
  are both held to be radiation in current theory.  In three dimensions, the
  sphere defining the radiation's wavefront increases its surface area --
  i.e., decreases the radiation's intensity -- with the exact square of the
  distance traveled, because a sphere's surface is proportional to its radius
  raised to the power 2.  Not 2.0000001, and not 1.9999999.  2. 
 
 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 01:07
 23:547) Brian Holtz: 2) He said that if the density of the universe were
  1/10^14 larger or smaller, then the universe would have long since either
  crunched back into a black hole or blown itself up much bigger,
  respectively.  But this is no coincidence if the net curvature of the
  universe turns out to be 1 (for which there is theoretical evidence to
  believe).  In such a case, the universe expands forever in time, but only
  asymptotically in space. 
 
  What I found most interesting was his concession that his coincidental
  physical constants might eventually be explained by the now-hidden variables
  of future theories.  He said that "faith" in the progress of science was
  just as much faith as is religious faith.  I think he's wrong because
  science isn't like the Little Engine That Could, saying "We're going to
  answer question X. I think we can! I think we can!" On the contrary, it is
  Dr. Bradley, in asserting what questions _won't_ be answered while many
  people are still working productively on them, who is makeing a leap of
  faith.  Science is not the business of figuring out what questions will or
  will not be answered.  Science is simply the business of provisionally
  asserting the simplest complex of theories that can consistently explain and
  predict the most phenomena.  There is no proposition that science accepts
  completely on authority or without evidence -- which is the definition of
  faith. 
 
  He cited from some writer or other what I think can only be a complete 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 01:07
 23:548) Brian Holtz: mangling of Drake's equation.  Drake's equation takes
  about a dozen variables -- number of stars in the galaxy, fraction of all
  planets in a stable orbit at the right distance from their star, fraction of
  all technical civilizations that don't destroy themselves, etc. -- and
  multiplies them together to get an estimate of the number of civilizations
  in our galaxy capable of radio astronomy.  Each variable has an uncertainty
  of up to at least an order of magnitude, and so the estimate turns out to be
  anywhere from a few hundred thousand such civilizations to ours being a 1 in
  a thousand or so lucky shot, depending on whether you use optimistic or
  pessimistic values for the variables.  The guy he cited gives the chance of
  _life_ bootstrapping in the _universe_ -- at all! -- at 1 in 10^31!  This is
  way off. 
 
  The only way he could have got this answer -- at least 40 orders of
  magnitude smaller than any I've ever seen -- is to have plugged in numbers
  from the other half of his argument, about the improbability of life
  bootstrapping itself.  He says experiments have been run to try to cook up
  life in a primordial-type soup, but he declined to say whether they had been
  run for the half a billion years that earth's experiment ran.  He alluded to
  probability calculations of polymers assembling life-like structures over
  geologic periods of time, but since such calculations weren't simulations
  they of course couldn't account for emergent properties being created by
  selection processes. 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 01:07
 23:549) Brian Holtz: He said that all of earth's life uses amino acids of one
  handedness, as if instead alternate biologies would evolve without one
  happening to occur first and thereby outcompeting the other. 
 
  In the question period he said likened the historical evidence for Jesus's
  divinity to the historical evidence that Washington was our first president. 
  I pointed out to him (yep, that was me) that we believe in past presidents
  because presidents are still around today, and fit in nicely with our
  current theories of everything, while the supernatural events from the Bible
  don't seem to happen any more.  He responded by saying that you shouldn't
  assume something didn't happen long ago if that sort of thing doesn't happen
  today.  I replied that I don't -- I just hold such phenomena to higher
  evidentiary standards, certainly higher than the polemical writings of
  zealots.  He then said something about needing faith, and moved on. 
 
  He repeated the old argument that only a Resurrection -- a Biblical claim --
  can explain the "facts" -- other Biblical claims, such as the missing body
  and the Apostle's instant courage.  The argument's circularity eluded him. 
 
  He also said that Jesus fulfilled prophecies that can be dated to before his
  birth, but I'm not aware of Jesus fulfilling any prophecy that any other
  well-read Nazarene evangelist couldn't have self-fulfilled. 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 19:04
 23:554) Brian Holtz: Major, ID: when you miss a reasonable range by 40 or
  more orders of magnitude, that's "way off".  If you want me to dig out the
  terms of Drake's equation so we can argue over their reasonable ranges, I
  will.  Like I said in my last response, the only way he could have got his
  number is to use his naive probabilistic analysis of polymer formation to
  arbitrarily minimize the term for the probability of life bootstrapping
  itself.  _That_ is the number that's "not worth the paper it's printed on". 
 
  Yes, life is information intensive, but saying that over and over doesn't
  get you anywhere.  It sounded like Dr. Bradley accepted evolution of at
  least the subhuman species, but he didn't give any principled reason why if
  natural selection can make chimps out of molecular self-replicators it can't
  make self-replicators out of soup. 
 
  What other "alternative metaphysical possibilites" do you mean?  I only
  heard him say that looking for an answer requires as much faith as assuming
  the question can't be answered, which is patently false. 
 
  You're right that his zeal sometimes got in the way.  He was way too eager
  to quote the philosophical spoutings of famous scientists, while not
  realizing that their philosophical spoutings are usually as worthless as
  their political ones. 
 - - - - -
 Apr06/90 22:50
 23:562) Brian Holtz: Major, try actually _reading_ my response next time
  before you start flinging around terms like "nonsense".  I said Drake's
 
  estimate turns out to be anywhere from a few hundred thousand civilizations
  [in our galaxy capable of radio astronomy] to ours being a 1 in a thousand
  or so lucky shot, depending on whether you use optimistic or pessimistic
  values for the variables.  The guy he cited gives the chance of _life_
  bootstrapping in the _universe_ -- at all! -- at 1 in 10^31!
 
  The nine (or more) missing orders of magnitude come from the differences a)
  between 1 and the number of galaxies in the universe; and b) between the
  odds of life bootstrapping and the odds of a radio-astronomical civilization
  bootstrapping. 
 
  ID, I'm quick to call Dr. Bradley's analysis of polymer combinations "naive"
  _precisely_ because that's his specialty.  His saying that it's too hard to
  evolve life out of polymers is like a bacteria specialist saying it's too
  hard to evolve brains out of bacteria.  By working too much with trees --
  polymers --, he doesn't see the forest -- emergent phenomena arising from
  selection pressures. 
 
  I'm not sure how important your change vs. creation distinction is.  No one
  is arguing that any conservation laws were broken in the primordial soup,
  and if "creation" is simply the bringing-into-being of (even a new kind of)
  a thing (even out of old kinds of things), then "creation" is also what was
  happening when reptiles were created 
 - - - - -
 Apr06/90 22:50
 23:563) Brian Holtz: out of birds.  I guess my point here is that just as no
  one thinks a bird hatched out of a lizard egg, no one thinks that a
  bacterium bounced out of the collision of a handful of polymers. 
 
  Some people have suggested that a lot of the junk in the genome is sort of
  like the combination to the lock that lets our cells be recognized by our
  immune system, and that sex is therefore a better way of keeping ahead of
  fast-evolving locksmiths like viruses than is relying on mutation.  It's
  unhealthy if your immune system can be fooled by any invader that can fool
  your parents' immune systems. 
 - - - - -
 Apr11/90 21:03
 23:567) Brian Holtz: I haven't got mine yet. 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:43
 23:571) Brian Holtz: This has been one of the better god items on M:S, though
  we got sidetracked by the Texas A&M talk before anyone could reply to my
  last response:
 
  My worldview does not merely suppose that "supernatural" events don't occur;
  it supposes that the only events that should be believed to have occurred
  are those for which there is credible _evidence_.  If your only evidence is
  the breathless claims of a handful of zealots, then it's far simpler to
  believe they were deluded, or exaggerating, or misinterpreting things, or
  all three, than to believe that the god-less system of theories that does so
  well explaining everything else should be tossed out on the basis of the
  ravings of a few people from antique Palestine.  Believe me, there's a lot
  of room between the claims of the Gospels and "hitting everyone on Earth
  over the head" for a deity to get her point across.  Why couldn't this Jesus
  have slipped a little cosmology into a sermon -- like, say, Planck's
  constant to 6 or 7 places -- to make his authenticity plain to later
  generations?  Why did he make it so easy to believe that his followers are
  just another handful of crackpots? 
 
  As for "facing death", I already am _doing_ that.  By my thinking, I have at
  most 60 years or so before it's lights out on Brian Holtz -- forever. Gone.
  Finis.  Even if I'm wrong and you're right, then at least I've got an
  _eternal_ lease on a spot in Hell, where -- if I could at least remember my
  earthly life -- I'd most likely count myself happier 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:43
 23:572) Brian Holtz: than if I no longer existed at all.  No, your
  well-intended threats of eternal _anything_ are a better deal than what I
  think I've got coming. 
 - - - - -
 Feb21/90 22:38
 212:79) Brian Holtz: Tim, regarding "historical evidence for events which
  occurred in the past", there's a big difference if the events in questions
  are things that go on all the time (wars, reigns, plagues) and things that
  you just don't see much of any more (resurrections, people turning into
  salt, immaculate conceptions).  Why is your god in hiding these days? 
 
  Brett, if Josh's book is so chock-full of convincing evidence, could you
  spill a little out onto your keyboard? 
 - - - - -
 Feb23/90 00:57
 212:97) Brian Holtz: Tim, the number of hours that Josh has studied is _not_
  evidence for Jesus's divinity.  The "impact of Jesus's life upon history" is
  _not_ evidence for Jesus's divinity.  That a carpenter's son claimed to
  fulfill some unspecified "prophecy" is _not_ evidence for Jesus's divinity. 
  Mere attestations of his resurrection are _not_ evidence for Jesus's
  divinity.  That you merely claim that Josh "refutes theories which try to
  explain away the resurrection" is _not_ evidence for Jesus's divinity.  That
  Josh wrote 85 (or 885!) pages is _not_ evidence for Jesus's divinity.  That
  Josh couldn't prove the resurrection was a hoax is _not_ evidence for
  Jesus's divinity.  The gospels probably weren't a "hoax", but at any rate it
  is not up to "others" to try to prove them so -- it is up to _you_ to
  provide _evidence_ for Jesus's divinity.  So far you have provided _none. 
 
  Brett, you are ignoring that the events described in your original Greek
  texts are _not_ believably familiar things like chairs supporting people,
  but supernatural events that have no hope of explanation in today's best
  thinking, which by the way can explain just about everything _else_. 
 - - - - -
 Feb24/90 20:43
 212:104) Brian Holtz: Tim, if there were hard evidence for Jesus's divinity,
  you _could_ type it in here.  Just have some of his Chosen call down a
  miracle or two, like God used to do when he was young and unruly during the
  Old Testament. Or find some incredibly prescient claim in one of your
  ancient holy books, like "E=mc^2" or "the universe is 15 billion years old". 
  Or uncover some artifact that could not have been created by the technology
  of its time.  Wouldn't it be a better service to your god if instead of
  endless, effusive praise you typed in the kind of evidence that could make a
  believer out of an open-minded skeptic? 
 - - - - -
 Apr11/90 21:00
 212:281) Brian Holtz: ID, what "systems" of complexity and longevity
  comparable to earth's ecosphere's have you observed that lead you to
  conclude that they "do not increase their order the way you [Lee] assume
  happens for the gradual ascent of man"? 
 - - - - -
 Apr14/90 19:37
 212:283) Brian Holtz: It's _not_ a "trick question"; if you say "systems do
  not increase their order the way you [Lee] must assume happens for the
  gradual ascent of man", then you must have some basis for saying so.  By my
  count of the solar system's candidate ecosystems, order increases in the way
  you say it _can't_ in about 1 out of every 4 or so cases -- with the
  failures on Titan, Venus, Mars, etc. hardly counting, given their unearthly
  conditions.  So again: what experiments have you been running on systems of
  complexity and longevity comparable to earth's ecosphere's? 
 - - - - -
 Apr15/90 22:46
 212:285) Brian Holtz: If you want to exclude other candidate ecosystems in
  the solar system, ID, that's fine by me; it _raises_ my batting average of
  order-increases a la the ascent of man in systems of complexity and
  longevity comparable to earth's ecosphere's to 1.000!  Yes, I'm "assuming"
  that the "increase in order" that gave us Homo sapiens was "natural",
  because in nature the observed incidence of Homo sapiens-like order in
  systems comparable to earth's ecosphere is 1.000 (by your count; maybe .250
  by mine).  So let me ask you yet again: what other planet-sized systems have
  you been observing over geologic time scales that led you to say "systems do
  not increase their order the way you [Lee] must assume happens for the
  gradual ascent of man"? 
 - - - - -
 Apr18/90 19:57
 212:295) ID w039: Where's Brian Holtz to make a funny analogy to ``ignorance
  about Santa Claus'' and how one can properly evalutate his existance only
  after reading enough documentation. 
 - - - - -
 Apr21/90 21:38
 212:309) Brian Holtz: Well, ID, if the only system you've been observing is
  earth, then it's just that your _observations_ conflict with evolutionists',
  and _not_ that your "observations" have yielded an ironclad law that
  evolution violates.  So how can you blithely make statements like "even
  having a genetic code the way the simplest organisms do -- say bacteria --
  is beyond the scope of evolutionary powers"? 
 
  You say, "I don't see the principles which make up the basis of evolution
  manifested in other ways in the natural realm".  What other systems of
  earth-like longevity, stability, and complexity have you looked at?  And
  remember, until you give us a better explanation of how intelligence arose
  here, earth counts _for_ evolution. 
 - - - - -
 Apr22/90 17:07
 212:311) Brian Holtz: ID, don't try to duck out of having to substantiate
  your empty claims about the amount of complexity systems can or cannot
  generate by pretending that evolution is merely the "first" explanation I
  "picked".  Evolution is the theory that _best_ explains the evidence,
  regardless of the "great deal of information" you say "is missing or
  unknown". 
 
  As for the Texas A&M prof, I posted a detailed rebuttal of his claims to
  item 23. 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:13
 212:313) Brian Holtz: "Both sides"?  What other "side" do you mean? 
  Creationism? 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 20:27
 212:319) Brian Holtz: ID, the argument for creationism is a paradigm case of
  special pleading.  It's very poor science to introduce a cosmic Life
  Engineer just because in the century or so we've been fleshing out the
  theory of evolution we still have questions about what all has been
  happening during the last 4 billion years.  What gaps in evolutionary
  biology do you think have been shown to be unbridgeable in the scant three
  decades since DNA was discovered?  Are we allowed to posit a Creator for
  every field in which explanatory progress isn't as fast as your programmer's
  intution demands? 
 - - - - -
 Apr24/90 13:15
 212:322) Brian Holtz: ID, I _wasn't_ justifying evolution on the basis of
  predicted progress of evolutionary theory.  I was saying that it's pointless
  to complain that the progress so far doesn't satisfy your programmer's
  intuition, since evolution does a better job of explaining the evidence then
  does creationism. 
 - - - - -
 Apr24/90 20:18
 212:326) Brian Holtz: Oh, ID, and just _how_ do you define your "threshhold
  of sufficiency" of evidence required for a theory to be "promoted as an
  answer"?  Did I ever say that we can stop doing biology, because evolution's
  "the answer"?  While there are of course varying degrees of confidence we
  have in even the best available theory for a given phenomenon, do you deny
  that it's the overwhelming consensus of professional biologists (as opposed
  to intuitive programmers) that life arose and evolved on earth thanks to
  natural selection? 
 
  The creationist scheme _indeed_ "inherantly changes the nature of the
  question", because harkening to a God of the Gaps isn't science at all. 
  There is tons of evidence to believe that genetics and intelligence
  _weren't_ "created".  For example, there is unused genetic material in
  several of the sub-cellular extra-nuclear modules, presumably left over from
  before their free-living precursors became symbiotic with early cells.  As
  for human intelligence, there are all kinds of psychology experiments
  showing how our much-vaunted 'reason' is counter-logically tuned for making
  the decisions that hominids are called upon to make. 
 - - - - -
 Apr26/90 00:38
 212:338) Brian Holtz: ID, it's not "fumbling for excuses" to say that
  human-style intelligence has evolved in one out of every four or five
  systems of even the most remotely relevant kind, and one out of one of every
  system of the truly relevant kind.  So your programmer's intuition about
  systems is completely unfounded, even if you _don't_ care that your
  intutions conflict with those of the people who bring a little more than
  their intuition to bear on this problem (like, their peer-reviewed
  _careers_!). 
 
  The essence of science is _not_ "observed repeatability", but _independent
  verifiability_.  Are you going to say the moon was "created" because the
  observation of even a remotely comparable satellite has proved impossible to
  "repeat"?  Would you have said ten years ago that the rings of Saturn were
  "created" for the same reason?  No, or course not.  Why?  Because what
  counts in science is whether your peers can independently come to the same
  conclusion as yours, and _not_ simply whether the phenomenon in question can
  be repeated for an arbitrary audience. 
 - - - - -
 Apr26/90 11:19
 212:340) Brian Holtz: ID, science _cannot_ exist independently of scientists;
  science is an _endeavor_.  I didn't say that to be a scientist anyone _has_
  to independently verify your results; I said that they have to be _able_ to
  do so.  What counts is whether your results are independently verifi_able_,
  _not_ whether they are independently veri_fied_.  The picture is simply
  bigger than the mere ability to get your phenomenon to jump through its
  hoops for arbitrary audiences. 
 - - - - -
 Apr28/90 15:37
 212:346) Brian Holtz: ID, by "verifiable" I don't mean "able to be verified
  today".  I mean something more like "able to be verified under reasonably
  possible circumstances".  By your straw man version of what I said,
  predictions of eclipses, for example, wouldn't count as science until the
  eclipse actually happens.  We often _are_ able to "make assumptions about
  the future", such as how soon the next solar eclipse will allow us to check
  relativity against the precession of Mercury, or how soon the engineers tell
  us they'll be able to detect gravity waves of a particular amplitude. 
 
  Your stilted notion of "verifiable" is underscored by your "1964" question. 
  _Yes_, you can do scientific research on 1964, precisely to the extent that
  the evidence you rely on makes your conclusions independently verifiable. 
 
  Your requirement that a phenomenon has to be controlled and made to jump
  through hoops for arbitrary audiences for its study to be "scientific" is
  absurdly narrow.  By your way of thinking, 1964 _is_ beyond scientific
  study.  By your way of thinking, any process that we can't repeat in a lab
  or find arbitrarily many natural instances of is opaque to scientific
  inquiry. 
 
  Life probably didn't evolve several separate times for the simple reason
  that the form of life that evolved first crowded out whatever others might
  have followed on.  However, the numerous examples of parallel evolution are
  very convincing evidence that evolution is 
 - - - - -
 Apr28/90 15:37
 212:347) Brian Holtz: opportunistic and unguided.  Examples: the eyes of
  octopuses are structurally very similar to ours, but evolved in a completely
  different kind of cell.  Of all the species living near seabed sulfur vents,
  no two yet studied have evolved the same mechanism of preventing their own
  sulfur poisoning. 
 - - - - -
 Apr29/90 01:23
 212:349) Brian Holtz: ID, I'm getting sick of asking you this, but I can
  repeat it as often as you can ignore it: exactly _what_ systems of the
  relevant kind have you "observed" where "life" and "human-scale
  intelligence" might have evolved but hasn't yet?  Will you tell us next that
  tornadoes are "created" because you don't see them in the sauna? 
 
  I can see you're getting desperate if you hang on by the fingernails to the
  term you understand least in each of my successively more-elaborated
  definitions of "verifiable".  You make no attempt to answer my examples
  (eclipses, gravity waves), or acknowledge my dismemberment of _your_ example
  (relativity).  To figure out what are "reasonably" possible circumstances
  for verifying a theory, the only people I need to put on any "panel" are the
  very people being asked to concur in the theory's verifiability.  That's
  _you_ in this case, so what's your verdict?  Is it "reasonable" in
  determining the verifiability of an eclipse prediction that, say, a time
  machine be on hand to fast forward to the eclipse, or is it ok to just walk
  through the orbital mechanics for the "panel"?  Is it "reasonable" in
  determining the verifiability of proton decay that, say, we have to capture
  and watch a single proton over its half-life, or is it ok to just make plans
  to fill a tankful of sensors with enough water to expect a proton decay in
  the first year or so?  Even in _your_ case 
   :), I trust the panel's desire not to look silly to get answers to
  questions like these. 
 
 
 - - - - -
 Apr29/90 01:23
 212:350) Brian Holtz: What's the difference between "repeating the
  phenomenon" and "repeating the principles" behind the phenomenon?  Was the
  moon "created" because the "principle" of a terrestrial planet having such a
  ridiculously large moon "unrepeated"?  Was Jupiter's Red Spot "created"? 
  Did some "creator" knock Uranus's axis on its side? 
 - - - - -
 Apr29/90 21:52
 212:353) Brian Holtz: ID, _I'm_ not saying that because evolution appears to
  have happened in 1 out of 1 systems of the relevant kind it therefore is a
  natural process.  What I'm saying is that it's unwarranted for _you_ to say
  that evolution is improbable if it's happened in 1 out of 1 systems of the
  relevant kind. 
 
  How is your being "unconvinced" that our uniquely outsized moon (and our
  unique terrestrial planets, and Uranus's uniquely oriented axis) isn't a
  "deviation from simplicity of gravitation condensation" any different from
  _my_ being "unconvinced" that our uniquely complex species isn't a
  "deviation from simplicity of" natural selection?  Do you have any
  principled reason for this (excluding, of course, your "programmer's
  intuition)? 
 
  Your continuing remarks about "quorums" and "kings" reveal an astonishing
  inability on your part to grasp my repeated explanations of scientific
  verification.  Look, I _don't_ propose that for a theory to be scientific it
  has to be verif_ied_ by _any_body.  Not by any "quorum".  Not by any "king". 
  Not by any "10 people" foolish enough to believe dumb theories like a flat
  earth or creationism.  For a theory to be scientific, it has to _in
  principle_ be verifi_able_, for the simple reason that we then need not rely
  on _any_one's authority or special experience to convince ourselves of the
  theory's validity. 
 
  How _can_ we "(1) test, and (2) see if it happens in other circumstances",
  phenomena like our uniquely outsized moon, our 
 - - - - -
 Apr29/90 21:52
 212:354) Brian Holtz: unique terrestrial planets, Uranus's uniquely oriented
  axis, and Jupiter's unique Red Spot?  Must we conclude that all these things
  were "created"? 
 - - - - -
 Apr30/90 13:10
 212:361) Brian Holtz: ID, I'll try to make this as simple as I can for you. 
  "Verifiable" is no more a "future conditional" than is "brittle".  Are you
  going to tell us you think it's unknown whether a piece of glass is brittle
  until it's actually broken?  Look, relativity is verifiable -- right now! 
  this instant! -- because we know -- right now! this instant! -- that we can
  repeat the steps that lead people to be persuaded as to whether relativity
  is or is not the case.  Similarly, we can repeat the steps that lead people
  to be persuaded as to whether or not _evolution_ is or is not the case.  (By
  contrast, no one can repeat the step of your "programmer's intution" telling
  you evolution is improbable, unless they're telepathic.)  Now, you can argue
  that those steps aren't persuasive to _you_ (and it'd be nice if you gave us
  some solid _reasons_ for their not being so), but you _can't_ argue that
  these steps aren't repeatable. 
 
  Again you say that what counts is having "shown that the principles work as
  advertised", but you don't even attempt to answer my questions about
  phenomena like Uranus's axis and Jupiter's Red Spot. 
 
  You talk of amino acids and the first life as if you're completely ignorant
  about current theories linking the two stages.  You ignore ideas of lipids
  with differential water affinity turning in on themselves to form the first
  protocellular walls; ideas of nonliving fermentation processes arising
  inside such enclosures; ideas of such 
 - - - - -
 Apr30/90 13:10
 212:362) Brian Holtz: enclosures naturally being selectively permeable to
  particular substances; and ideas of the first RNA arising under the
  favorable conditions of such enclosures.  No, all you do is blithely say
  that life is "complex" and "thus requires engineering".  You give us
  absolutely no reason to think that an ocean-ful of primordial soup and a few
  hundred million years can't provide their own "engineering", as evolutionary
  theory suggests. 
 
  You can't just pronounce "consciousness" as some kind of mantra and expect
  biologists to come to worship at your church of creation.  The similarity
  between the human and chimpanzee genomes is around 99% or so.  You have no
  basis for saying that natural selection could not make the final changes
  accounted for by the 1% difference, unless you want to back yourself into
  saying that natural selection can't account for _any_ species difference,
  and that your Creator has been a lot busier than you had thought. 
 - - - - -
 May01/90 13:21
 212:368) Brian Holtz: ID, you're really getting confused now, and it's making
  you look worse and worse.  Yes, glass qualifies as "brittle" only if it's
  clear that we can break some.  _Similarly_, a theory qualifies as
  "verifiable" only if it's clear that "we can repeat the steps that lead
  people to be persuaded as to whether [the theory] is or is not the case". 
  Try to use your allegedly created intellect to grasp this point: my argument
  about verifiability is intended to rebut your claim that evolution isn't
  science (i.e., that the steps leading to an assertion of evolution aren't
  repeatable), and _not_ to rebut any claim that those steps _rightly_ lead to
  that assertion (that's what the _rest_ of our argument is about).  The point
  about verifiability is that, whether it's right or wrong, evolution _does_
  qualify as science, because the evidence it is based on (unlike your
  "programmer's intution") is public; indeed, many a creationist have weighed
  that evidence and found it unconvincing. 
 
  The questions about Uranus's axis and Jupiter's Red Spot address this issue. 
  What I want to know is whether you think that just because these phenomena
  are unique and unrepeatable, they must have been "created", _even though_
  the steps that scientists currently take to arrive at whatever conclusions
  they have about these phenomena _are_ repeatable. 
 
  Your describing my rough sampling from memory of current theories about
  evolutionary genesis as "science fiction" is mere hand-waving. 
 - - - - -
 May01/90 13:21
 212:369) Brian Holtz: How far do I have to go in my successive elaborations
  of current evolutionary theory before you get embarrassed at blithely
  dismissing them as "wild imaginations"?  Do I have to start typing in whole
  papers and texts?  For someone who professes such high standards of what
  constitutes science, your tendency to brush off (instead of refute) theories
  is pathetically ironic.  Your glib demand that I _show_ you interesting
  subsequences of evolutionary genesis in a test tube when the real thing took
  a whole ocean half a billion years is a red herring.  Only a child would
  think that because you can't fit an evolution kit under the Christmas tree,
  evolution must not be true. 
 
  More of the "consciousness" mantra.  Great.  What exactly _is_
  "consciousness"?  Washoe the signing chimp is able to name herself in
  sentences about hereself; is _that_ consciousness?  In case you don't know,
  what really sets us apart in anthropologists' eyes is not some
  quasi-mystical soul-concept, but our ability to use language to do abstract
  thinking.  And in case you aren't up on your neurology and linguistics, we
  have very specific hardware support for language.  There is plenty of reason
  to think that this hardware support is part of what the 1% genomic
  difference specifies. 
 
  Adrian's point is well-taken, which I'm sure is why you ignored it when I
  made a weaker form of it.  You _did_ say you believed in evolution outside
  of genesis and cognition, right?  If so, aren't 
 - - - - -
 May01/90 13:22
 212:370) Brian Holtz: elephants an _uncreated_ "exponential increase in
  complexity" over bacteria?  If not, are you going to start telling us that
  your "Creator" drew blueprints for _each_ of the millions of species? 
 - - - - -
 May01/90 21:55
 212:373) Brian Holtz: Yes, ID, I know you've been pushing a distinction
  between evolution as an "observed mechanism" and evolution as an
  "originator" (although I think in the former case you mean natural
  selection; natural selection has been "observed", but evolution hasn't). 
  Would you also say that the notion that the wimpy geologic processes we can
  "observe" have caused continental drift "is pushing the limits of
  credibility", and that the present layout therefore must have been
  "created"? 
 - - - - -
 Feb24/90 20:45
 249:7) Brian Holtz: Maverick, there are plenty of items in which
  meta-discussion is inappropriate. If you want to comment on the item, you
  can do it here.  "Praising just the christian god" does _not_ "show a lack
  of tolerance".  Tolerance means allowing and listening to the expression of
  contrary views.  Tolerance does _not_ mean the _acceptance_ of contrary
  views.  Tim is in no position to disallow an item on the praise of any other
  gods, and he has shown plenty of willingness to listen to contrary views on
  the broader god items.  Also, praising god is hardly the same thing as
  proselytizing for him -- that's what Tim is busily doing on the other god
  items.  There's a big difference between accosting someone on the street and
  entering an item in a conference.  Finally, beyound *COU there's no rules
  against "poor taste".  Are you proposing to write one? 
 
  Tom, there can't be comment _in_ the item; there clearly can be comment _on_
  the item, as this item demonstrates.  Meta-discussion is inappropriate in
  many items, and Confer etiquette is right to let item authors constrain
  discussion, since item authors cannot prevent the entry of related items. 
 - - - - -
 Feb25/90 21:22
 249:21) Brian Holtz: Maverick, I can think of plenty of items in which
  meta-discussion is inappropriate:  word association, hangman, iterative
  story-writing, jokes, and top ten lists are just some of the items I can
  remember forgetting in which discussion of the item's raison d'etre would
  amount to trashing the item.  Again, do you assert that Tim can prevent the
  entry of items for praising other gods?  Do you assert that Tim can prevent
  items like this one?  What would you say in Tim's item that can't be said in
  your own item?  Can you not imagine an for discussion of effective tactics
  for promoting the pro-choice side of abortion?  Can you not imagine an item
  for discussing just the Pistons?  Your abortion and basketball analogies are
  "full of s$@*" (to use your pathetic rhetoric), since both of those items
  are for exactly the kind of responses that their headers indicate.  Don't
  you realize there's a difference between a) Tim entering a praise-deities
  item but restricting it to praise of Jesus, and b) Tim doing exactly what he
  did?  Don't you realize that most items could be carried on "outside of the
  computer"?  As for proselytizing, why don't you address Tim's argument that
  his god demands praise for no reason He cares to divulge? 
 
  Jim, Tim _didn't_ enter the item "to debate a question", he entered it
  expressly to praise his god. 
 - - - - -
 Feb25/90 21:33
 249:23) Brian Holtz: Gee, Maverick, which of your "points" did I not answer
  in :21?  If you're so much in favor of discussion, how about answering some
  or all of the eight questions I addressed to you in my last response? 
 - - - - -
 Feb26/90 21:03
 249:39) Brian Holtz: Sorry, Jim, I thought the item under discussion was the
  praise-the-lord item. 
 
  Maverick, rude and obscene jokes and stories are possible violations of
  *COU, and as such are open for discussion when and where they occur. 
  Praising one's favorite deity cannot possibly be construed as violating
  *COU.  Tim _cannot_ prevent the entry of items for praising other gods; what
  he _can_ do (apparently) is retire responses to _his_ item that do not fall
  within the item's stated (non-*COU-violating) purpose.  You keep talking
  about "poor taste", but you give us no reason for supposing that by "poor
  taste" you mean nothing other than whatever you don't like.  You are flat
  wrong that Tim entered his item as praise for deities; the item is called
  "Praise the LORD".  No matter how many times you baldly assert it, it's just
  not true that all M:S items are for discussion (e.g., hangman, word
  association, iterative story-writing, top ten lists).  Since Tim has now
  changed his tune (by saying that the item is also to give his god good
  publicity), he is perhaps indeed proselytizing.  If so, then I would still
  disagree with you that "proselytizing ... does not belong on the
  conference", and argue that if the item is truly for _selling_ (as opposed
  to empty _praising_) of some god, then it is indeed appropriate for M:S but
  should be open for contrary product reviews. 
 - - - - -
 Feb27/90 20:35
 249:55) Brian Holtz: Meano: huh?  I said "Praising one's favorite deity
  _cannot_ possibly be construed as violating *COU. 
 
  Sorry, Wendy, I wasn't sure who was retiring those responses.  I still think
  it's legit if an organizer retires responses "that do not fall with the
  item's stated (non-*COU-violating) purpose". 
 
  Gosh, Mav, I'm sorry you think my answers to you "suck".  Just because I
  answer your questions and you don't answer mine doesn't mean that it's
  "reduced to me saying no and you yes".  Here, I'll even help you out by
  reprinting the questions of mine you haven't answered:
 
  1. Do you assert that Tim can prevent the entry of items for praising other
  gods?  2. Do you assert that Tim can prevent items like this one?  3. What
  would you say in Tim's item that can't be said in your own item?  4. Can you
  not imagine an item for discussion of effective tactics for promoting the
  pro-choice side of abortion?  5. Can you not imagine an item for discussing
  just the Pistons?  6. Do you deny that you are flat wrong that Tim entered
  his item as praise for deities, and that the item is called "Praise the
  LORD"?  7. Do you deny that items such as hangman, word association,
  iterative story-writing, and top ten lists are not for discussion?  8. Why
  should we suppose that by "poor taste" you mean nothing other than whatever
  you don't like? 
 
  Len, Tim's item didn't "discriminate as to who may respond", it
  discriminated as to the topic of allowable responses.  (Almost) _all_ 
 - - - - -
 Feb27/90 20:35
 249:56) Brian Holtz: items do that.  "Those who do not believe that Jesus is
  god" (I should know, because I _am_ one) aren't "forced" to do _anything_. 
  They are simply presented with yet another item that holds no appeal for
  them.  Yawn. 
 
  Judy, how is setting up an item for praising just one god an "insult" to any
  other religion?  By that thinking, wouldn't setting up a _church_ for
  praising just one god be a similar "insult"? 
 - - - - -
 Mar01/90 18:01
 249:75) Brian Holtz: Mav, I just re-read the eight questions for you that I
  claim you didn't answer.  Now, here's your chance to make me look really
  stupid, by picking any subset of the eight and pasting in your answer to
  it/them from any of your previous responses.  Think you're up to that, big
  boy? :) 
 - - - - -
 Mar02/90 19:21
 249:86) Brian Holtz: Sorry, Mav, you lose.  I re-read your responses 4, 8,
  22, and 25, and they don't answer a single question of the following eight:
 
  1. Do you assert that Tim can prevent the entry of items for praising other
  gods?  2. Do you assert that Tim can prevent items like this one?  3. What
  would you say in Tim's item that can't be said in your own item?  4. Can you
  not imagine an item for discussion of effective tactics for promoting the
  pro-choice side of abortion?  5. Can you not imagine an item for discussing
  just the Pistons?  6. Do you deny that you are flat wrong that Tim entered
  his item as praise for deities, and that the item is called "Praise the
  LORD"?  7. Do you deny that items such as hangman, word association,
  iterative story-writing, and top ten lists are not for discussion?  8. Why
  should we suppose that by "poor taste" you mean nothing other than whatever
  you don't like? 
 
  Again, if you can find an answer to a single one of these questions in your
  previous responses, then it should be simple even for you to paste it in,
  thereby making me look really really bad. Similarly, if you think any of
  your previous responses contains a question I haven't answered, just name it
  so I can show you how wrong you are.  Make my day. 
 - - - - -
 Mar03/90 20:21
 249:89) Brian Holtz: Well, Star, I guess I sometimes end up charging people
  with not answering my questions because I usually have more patience than
  they.  But it's less common for my interlocuter to end upsaying I haven't
  answered her questions, probably because whenever that happens I simply
  invite her to repeat the questions in question (ouch!).  They rarely decline
  the invitation, but Maverick has shown that it's not unheard of. 
 - - - - -
 Mar05/90 20:58
 249:101) Brian Holtz: Meano, I think the slight loss of immediacy that
  results from discussing non-discussion-type items outside the items
  themselves pales compared to the loss of not being able to enter
  non-discussion-type items without having them trashed. 
 
  If someone entered an item called, say, "Ideas for pro-choice political
  ads", wouldn't it be uncalled for to deliberately bombard it with responses
  picking a fight over whether pro-choice is the correct position?  If someone
  entered an item called, say, "The Pistons", wouldn't it be uncalled for to
  deliberatedly bombard it with responses about the Bulls? 
 
  Why does every non-fluff, non-game item have to be an all-out pro-and-con
  discussion?  If I entered an item called "Sonnets in Celebration of Winter",
  wouldn't it be uncalled for to deliberately bombard it with responses
  picking a fight over what's the best season? 
 
  Why should an assumption of Jesus being the "one true God" be in bad taste? 
  Why is disagreeing with someone necessarily the same as insulting him? 
 
  I don't like legislating courtesy either, Star, but what should be done when
  someone like Maverick admittedly goes about trashing an item because he
  doesn't like its scope? 
 - - - - -
 Mar02/90 19:22
 252:37) Brian Holtz: Dan, atheism doesn't require faith.  It takes no "leap
  past logic" to say that there is no reason for believing any of the
  following exist: god, santa claus, black swans, the great pumpkin, the
  easter bunny, the tooth fairy, etc. 
 
  Jesse, what is "absolute knowledge"?  The only thing I absolutely know is
  that something exists.  Still, I'm as sure that god doesn't exist as I am
  that Santa Claus doesn't.  If that doesn't qualify for promotion from
  agnostic to atheist, what does? 
 - - - - -
 Mar12/90 22:05
 252:51) Brian Holtz: I _did_ read your response, Jesse; you didn't read
  _mine_:
 
   Jesse, what is "absolute knowledge"?  The only thing I absolutely know 
   is that something exists.  Still, I'm as sure that god doesn't exist 
   as I am that Santa Claus doesn't.  If that doesn't qualify for 
   promotion from agnostic to atheist, what does? 
 
  I think your definition of "agnostic" is either way too loose or way too
  tight, depending on how you define "absolute knowledge". 
 - - - - -
 Mar15/90 17:41
 252:60) Brian Holtz: Then I say again, Jesse, that you can't have "absolute
  certainty" about any proposition other than the proposition "something
  exists".  That makes everybody an agnostic, and that makes "agnostic" a
  meaningless term. 
 - - - - -
 Mar17/90 21:01
 252:69) Brian Holtz: Jesse, the issue of apodictic certainty has been a
  well-defined one in Western philosophy since at least Descartes, but I've
  never heard of anyone associating the term "agnostic" with any position on
  this issue.  At any rate, under your definition ("someone who believes that
  absolute knowledge is impossible", where "absolute knowledge is absolute
  certainty") _nobody_ should be an agnostic, since I don't think anyone can
  doubt the proposition "something exists". 
 
  Mike, while _you_ may be mystified by the incredibleness of cells, math, and
  the universe, why is it that the people whose very _job_ it is to understand
  these things in the arena of peer review do not need recourse to a
  "designer"?  Where are the journal articles that say "natural phenomenon X
  is so complex that it could only have been designed"? 
 - - - - -
 Mar24/90 23:26
 252:89) Brian Holtz: Brad, scientists don't limit themselves to understanding
  "the process".  You can make science basically out of any conclusion that is
  convincing and reproducible enough to sway your colleagues.  I promise you,
  if you could publish a paper convincing scientists in any field that natural
  phenomena X is so complex that it could only have been designed, your career
  would be made.  The idea of all these scientists walking around knowing
  what's too complex to be natural and what's not, but not publishing their
  results, is laughable. 
 
  Gary, Stephen Hawking says asking "what came before the big bang?" is like
  asking "what's north of the North Pole?". 
 - - - - -
 Mar25/90 10:53
 252:91) Brian Holtz: Well, I don't think it's necessary that either spacetime
  to be closed or that end equal beginning for time to have begun with the Big
  Bang.  We may indeed know, if cosmologists can show that absolute
  nothingness is unstable and breaks down into a singularity. 
 
  It's only more "fun" to be evil if you assume, like Christians do, that
  people are inherently evil.  I think that as a social species we can't help
  but inherently be more good than bad, or we would've destroyed ourselves
  long ago.  Also, computer competitions of Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma show
  that the best strategy is tit-for-tat: cooperate, but respond in kind to
  injustice. 
 - - - - -
 Mar27/90 18:20
 252:93) Brian Holtz: But with modern technology the balance of power in
  anarchic human interactions would be very unstable, whereas in iterated
  Prisoner's Dilemma everyone is equally armed.  I contend that a justice
  system like America's does a better job of promoting tit-for-tat-style
  interactions than we have reason to believe anarchy could. 
 - - - - -
 Mar29/90 21:34
 252:101) Brian Holtz: David, do you think that without states that firearms
  will just disappear?  The nice thing about iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is
  that no player can kill any other; what's to prevent murder under anarchy? 
 
  According to the local webster server:
 
  ag.nos.tic \ag-'na:s-tik\ \-t*-.siz-*m\ aj [Gk agno-stos unknown, 
     unknowable, fr. a- + gno-stos kn]own, fr. gigno-skein to know - more at 
     KNOW 1: of or relating to the belief that the existence of any ultimate 
     reality (as God) is unknown and prob. unknowable 2: NONCOMMITTAL,
 
  athe.ist \'a--the--*st\ \.a--the--'is-tik\ \-'is-ti-k(*-)le-\ n : one who 
     denies the existence of God; INFIDEL: an ATHEIST is one who denies the 
     existence of God and rejects all religous faith and practice; an AGNOSTIC 
     withholds belief because he is unwilling to accept the evidence of 
     revelation and spiritual experience; DEIST rejects [...] 
 - - - - -
 Mar31/90 13:47
 252:106) Brian Holtz: Jesse, I'll just take your word for it that the
  Encyclopedia of Unbelief agrees with your non-standard, distinction-losing
  definition. 
 
  What if you both cannot protect yourself and cannot convince others to do it
  for you?  The state claims no monopoly on _protection_; you are free to hire
  a security service or buy a gun.  The state _does_ claim a monopoly on
  administering justice to those who commit aggression. 
 
  David, there's a yawning chasm between "almost completely useless" and
  'dispositive of all related philosophical questions'.  For instance, I can
  tell from the dictionary definitions I gave (which I don't see differing
  from yours) that in general use being "agnostic" is contradictory with being
  "atheist".  That's why I made the remark which started this thread, about
  "promotion" from agnostic to atheist.  All usages are not created equal, and
  it's silly to take usages in general contexts to be anything but general. 
 - - - - -
 Mar31/90 16:32
 252:109) Brian Holtz: We don't know yet, though some physicists think it's
  because nothingness is inherently unstable. 
 
  Sounds good to me, Jesse.  It'd be nice if there were an interesting item
  that wasn't about God, Israel, or abortion. 
 - - - - -
 Mar31/90 23:06
 252:111) Brian Holtz: The idea is that vacuums are unstable because of the
  Uncertainty Principle.  Maybe your question shouldn't be "why is there
  something rather than nothing?", but rather "why are the laws of physics the
  way they are?". 
 - - - - -
 Apr01/90 22:17
 252:114) Brian Holtz: Actually, David, when I restated it for you I
  oversimplified it.  According to general relativity, spacetime can't exist
  without, and indeed is created by, matter.  So the theory is that once the
  present laws of physics are in force, with the uncertainty principle
  specifying that it can't be _certain_ that there isn't anything, then a
  something (e.g., a singularity exploding in Big Bang-like fashion) has a
  certain probability of bursting into existence. 
 
  Again, I think your question should be "why are the laws of physics the way
  they are?"  I don't know if we'll ever know the answer to that, but it might
  just turn out that the way physical laws are is the only way they could
  consistently be.  I don't know how you'd show that, though. 
 
  In all fairness, however, I've only been answering the question "Why should
  it be nomologically possible for anything to exist?"  You're probably asking
  something more like "Why should it be metaphysically possible for anything
  to exist?".  I'm not sure what form an answer to that would take, so I'm not
  sure the question makes sense.  It sounds sort of like "Why didn't time
  start an hour earlier than it did?". 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 01:10
 252:120) Brian Holtz: David, I didn't say that the physical laws might be
  necessary truths; I just said that the physical laws might turn out to be
  the only consistent kind of physical laws you could have.  You could still
  have no laws at all, I suppose.  You have to be careful about saying what
  physical constants could be different; many constants have later been found
  to be an expression involving other constants.  Like I said, the set of
  constants we have might still turn out to be the only consistent ones, but
  don't ask me to show you that to be the case. 
 
  No, I of course am not saying that a question doesn't make sense if its
  answer isn't know.  I'm saying that some questions don't make sense because
  they ask for an answer that can only take a nonsensical form.  I gave the
  example, "Why didn't time start an hour earlier than it did?".  This
  question is I think impossible to answer, but I submit that it is
  nonetheless not a very urgent one.  You see, why-questions are the most
  loaded kind, presuming intention, causation, or explanation where there
  might not be any.  So maybe a more fundamental question is, "Why must there
  be an answer to 'Why is there anything?'?". 
 
  This hurts my head. 
 
  Woops, looks like your :118 anticipates my answer to your :115. 
 - - - - -
 Apr03/90 19:13
 252:122) Brian Holtz: Oh, I think it "might be the case that the physical
  constants could not be consistently different" because such a case is not a
  logical contradiction.  "Might" is a pretty weak condition, after all. 
 
  By contrast, your answer (that time started an hour earlier than it did) is
  clearly a logical contradiction -- an instant cannot be an hour earlier than
  itself, by definition of the terms involved. 
 - - - - -
 Apr08/90 19:17
 252:125) Brian Holtz: David, 1) for me to show that it might be possible --
  that is, logically non-contradictory -- that the physical constants could
  not consistently be otherwise, all I have to do is point to the absence of
  any proposed contradictions in the idea.  In interesting cases it's always
  impossible to _prove_ such an absence, just like it's impossible to prove an
  universally existential negative.  2) I don't think so.  It is just as
  conceivable that the physical constants could boil down to _zero_ variables
  as it is one.  I can conceive it -- see?  I'm conceiving it right now.  :) 
  3) I changed "consistent" in the outer occurrence to "non-contradictory",
  which is very well-defined.  The "consistency" of physics is of course very
  ill-defined, which is another reason why it's hard to swallow your sweeping
  claims that it must be logically contradictory for only one physics to be
  "consistent".  4) Freeze! I never said we should "believe" that the physical
  constants could not consistently be otherwise; I just said it's conceivable. 
  I usually can conceive far more than I can believe -- can't you?  :) 
 - - - - -
 Apr11/90 21:01
 252:127) Brian Holtz: David, didn't you read my previous response?  I just
  finished telling you that to show something to be logically possible you
  merely have to "point to the absence of any proposed contradictions in the
  idea".  I _can_ do this, and I'm doing it right now: see, everybody, no one
  has found any logical contradictions in the idea (call it P) that the
  physical constants could not consistently be otherwise, so that state of
  affairs would seem logically possible.  Ta daaaaaaah!
 
  Your last objection doesn't work, because you say in essence that all
  previous reductions of the number of physical constants have always left a
  non-empty subset of remaining physical constants.  Well, all that really
  shows is that to prove P one would be doing something that hasn't been done
  before.  P does not entail reducing physics to "nothing else"; it entails
  reducing physics to where the physical constants cannot be consistently
  otherwise. 
 - - - - -
 Apr14/90 19:39
 252:131) Brian Holtz: Jesus, David, you _can't_ be this dense!  In my
  response before last I said
 
   Freeze! I never said we should "believe" that the physical constants 
   could not consistently be otherwise; I just said it's conceivable.  I 
   usually can conceive far more than I can believe -- can't you? 
 
  Do you mean you really, truly can't discern a distinction between the set of
  possibly true propositions and the set of propositions that should be
  believed? 
 
  Yes, I'll admit that no logical contradiction forces itself upon me when
  when I contemplate -- call it P' -- the proton/election mass ratio being
  different, so therefore it's seems perfectly possible to me that the ratio
  _could_ have been different.  And, in turn, you have been quite unable to
  identify any logical contradictions in P -- the idea that the physical
  constants could not consistently be otherwise.  Therefore, neither P nor P'
  can yet be ruled out as impossible to be true.  Rather, only (P & P') can be
  ruled out as impossible to be true (though we already new that). 
 
  I guess what you don't understand is that no matter how _possible_ it seem
  for a proposition P' to be true, it doesn't count as making (not P')
  impossible to be true unless P' IS IN FACT TRUE.  This really is just basic
  logic. 
 
  Can what, Jesse?  This is I think the most interesting and literate
  discussion of the conference. 
 - - - - -
 Apr15/90 16:54
 252:137) Brian Holtz: Dave, your claim that "it does not produce
  understanding to be told that something is logically possible" is clearly
  false.  If I tell you that it's logically possible to search an ordered
  array by key comparison in time O(log n), you understand more than you did
  before you understood what I told you.  The same goes for the logically
  _im_possible.  If I tell you that it's logically impossible to give an
  effective procedure for telling whether an arbitrary Turing machine will
  halt on an arbitrary input, you understand more. 
 
  You say, "What you establish is not that it is logically possible that [P],
  but rather that I have not yet shown that it does involve contradiction to
  hold that [P]."  So I will again quote an earlier response of mine for you,
  which itself quoted an even earlier response of mine:
 
   David, didn't you read my previous response?  I just finished telling 
   you that to show something to be logically possible you merely have to 
   "point to the absence of any proposed contradictions in the idea". 
 
  If you disagree with this -- what I think is the usual philosophical sense
  of "logically possible" --, would you mind giving us a clue why? 
 
  Your free will example doesn't work, because there _is_ a logical
  contradiction between free will -- something isn't deterministic -- and your
  ex hypothese "deterministic laws" -- everything is deterministic.  By
  contrast, there isn't a logical contradiction between P and current physical
  laws, because current physical laws say 
 - - - - -
 Apr15/90 16:54
 252:138) Brian Holtz: "the p+/e- mass ratio is x", _not_ "there is required
  to be a non-empty set of arbitrary physical constants which includes the
  following...".  As you say, "no one understands *how* the constants could
  drop out", but by the same token, no one can point to any physics that it
  would contradict for the constants to drop out.  Not so for free will in
  your thought experiment. 
 
  Re: "Oh, yeah, ...": I don't think there _are_ any synthetic necessary
  truths.  I didn't even think there was still anybody around who thought
  there were. 
 - - - - -
 Apr21/90 21:38
 252:142) Brian Holtz: David (ok, ok, stop the "Bri" business ;), I _didn't_
  say "there are no synthetic necessary truths".  I said, "I don't think there
  _are_ any synthetic necessary truths".  Still, I would argue that "all
  necessary truths are analytic" is itself merely an analytic truth.  I'm
  pretty sure I'm a "verificationist", so saying verificationism is in
  "decline" of course doesn't sway me much.  At any rate, you still haven't
  explained what synthetic necessary truths have to do with logical
  possibility. 
 
  I'm glad to see you finally understand what I've been saying about logical
  possibility.  However, merely asserting that I'm "off the mark", and
  repeating your alternative definition of logical possibility, again doesn't
  do much for me.  The reason I think it's important to construct logical
  possibility as I do is because it underpins the philosophical technique of
  "possible worlds" arguments.  I have never seen a "possible world" argument
  that included a formal demonstration that one "*could* *not* find any
  contradictions in the idea" of the possible world in question.  The reason
  is obvious: such a demostration would be impossible for any interesting
  thought experiment. 
 
  You "want to know under what conceivable conditions could the constants drop
  out".  _I_ want to know how it could be inconceivable that they couldn't. 
  You haven't advanced a single convincing argument that it could. 
 - - - - -
 Apr21/90 21:39
 252:143) Brian Holtz: As for free will, I said
 
   there _is_ a logical contradiction between free will -- something 
   isn't deterministic -- and your ex hypothese "deterministic laws" -- 
   everything is deterministic. 
 
  The "your ex hypothese" part means that it was _you_, in _your_ thought
  experiment about an argument over free will, who hypothesized "the
  deterministic laws of nature".  In your thought-experiment argument, free
  will _would_ be a logical impossibility, _given_ the premise that _you_
  stipulated.  As I went on to say,
 
   By contrast, there isn't a logical contradiction between P and current 
   physical laws, because current physical laws say "the p+/e- mass ratio 
   is x", _not_ "there is required to be a non-empty set of arbitrary 
   physical constants which includes the following...".  As you say, "no 
   one understands *how* the constants could drop out", but by the same 
   token, no one can point to any physics that it would contradict for 
   the constants to drop out.  Not so for free will in your thought 
   experiment. 
 
  If nature is "deterministic" (as your thought experiment seems to stipulate)
  and we grant the materialist assumption that the will is not influenced by
  the supernatural, then the logical contradiction between nature as you
  stipulate it and free will is inescapable.  Where's the inescapable logical
  contradiction in the physical constants dropping out? 
 
  Now, not being a theoretical physicist, I'd have a hard time telling 
 - - - - -
 Apr21/90 21:39
 252:144) Brian Holtz: you "how" the constants could drop out, since that'd be
  a big part of showing you that they _do_ drop out (which I'm not yet
  convinced you understand I'm saying I can't do).  If I were weaving into
  science fiction, it might be that all the physical constants are eventually
  found to depend on the dimensionality of the universe, perhaps, and that
  topological parsimony somehow required dimensions in excess of our four to
  collapse away.  Again, this question of "how" is absolutely irrelevant to
  whether it's logically possible. 
 
  By the way, what exactly would Godel's theorems have to do with allowing
  free will if nature were deterministic? 
 - - - - -
 Apr22/90 17:07
 252:148) Brian Holtz: David, I concur that the question of "how" the
  constants could drop out is interesting to anyone who'd like to know how
  they could, but you're forgetting that my claims are confined to the
  _possibility_ of their dropping out, not the _modality_. 
 
  You're going to have to give me precise definitions of "analytic" and
  "necessary" before I'll embark on the expedition you map out for me, so I'll
  know exactly what you're asking me to prove.  But if you're so sure that
  necessary synthetic truths exist, why not favor us with one?  Until you do,
  I may very well just stand pat with "no necessary synthetic truths have been
  discovered".  Also, you still haven't given us a clue as to the connection
  of necessary synthetic truths with the notion of logical possibility.  And
  in the future, don't give us "please read M. Portant Filossofer's _Brilliant
  Paper_" sentences unless they're accompanied by sentences of the form
  "Filossofer's argument is ...".  A philosophical argument that can't be
  reproduced or summarized isn't philosophy at all. 
 
  Yes, the computability example I gave of logical possibility is stronger
  than I intended.  Closer in weakness to the kind of logical possibility I'm
  pushing is the ubiquitous "possible worlds" examples that one sees in the
  philosophical literature.  Such examples often postulate future scientific
  discoveries, as I have. 
 
  For (what I wish would be) the last time, _I_ made no claims about 
 - - - - -
 Apr22/90 17:07
 252:149) Brian Holtz: free will or determinism.  I merely showed that in your
  hypothetical argument, free will is logically contradictory given a Nature
  that is deterministic (as is not the case for the constants dropping out). 
  If you want to change the givens in your hypothesis so that Nature isn't
  completely deterministic, then free will _is_ left logically possible (a la
  the constants dropping out).  The only "additional premise" that I _would_
  say is necessary for these hypothetical results is that the will is not
  influenced by the supernatural. 
 
  Incidentally, I don't think Godel's theorems apply to physical systems in
  the way you suppose, because it's not at all clear that the complete state
  of the universe can be tokened _inside_ the universe.  Remember, Godel's
  theorems only apply to systems that are powerful enough to do arithmetic,
  for the simple reason that you can encode an infinite amount of information
  in a word if your words are unbounded integers. 
 
  To summarize, (1) show me a necessary synthetic truth, and tell me what they
  have to do with logical possibility.  (2) Yes, my computability example was
  stronger than need be (forgive a computer scientist for having stronger
  results at hand than philosphers usually do :), but philosophers do
  regularly use possible world examples as weak as the constants dropping out. 
  (3) Try actually _reading_ any of me 2 or 3 previous responses, and realize
  that my comments on free 
 - - - - -
 Apr22/90 17:07
 252:150) Brian Holtz: will follow only from premises in an argument that
  _you_ hypothesized! (4) Who cares? (i.e., specifying "how" is irrelevant to
  logical possibility), and, I _did_ give you an example of how the constants
  could conceivably drop out. 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:14
 252:153) Brian Holtz: While we're remembering things, it might be helpful to
  remember why I advanced the possibility of the constants dropping out in the
  first place: as a way that there might be no answer to the question, "why
  are the laws of physics the way they are?".  Look, nobody's _saying_ that
  knowing something is logically possible is as "satisfying" as knowing how
  that something could be done.  What I _am_ saying is that a possibly true
  answer to the above question is: "the way physical laws are is the only way
  they could consistently be."  You can argue that this answer cannot be true
  (i.e., that it is necessarily false), but you can't deny that were it true
  it would answer the question. 
 
  Sorry, but "there are synthetic necessary truths" really means (a) "at least
  this statement is a synthetic necessary truth", or (b) "some statement other
  than this one is a synthetic necessary truth".  If (a) then the statement is
  analytic (and thus false).  If (b) then you still need to find me a
  convincingly synthetic necessary truth. 
 
  As for an example of a possible worlds argument, take
  some-philosopher-of-meaning's twin earth example of a planet just like ours
  except whose oceans and swimming pools etc. are filled not with H2O but
  rather a complex molecule XYZ that has all the macroscopic properties of
  H2O.  Contrary to your dictum, he did _not_ show in his paper that "we
  *could* *not* find any contradictions in the idea".  In fact, there is no
  reason whatsoever to believe that it is even 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:14
 252:154) Brian Holtz: nomologically possible for a complex molecule to have
  all the macroscopic properties of H20, just as there is no reason whatsoever
  to believe that all the constants will drop out of our nomology.  Yet the
  two contingencies remain logically possible. 
 
  You're really beginning to amaze me on this free will thing.  First of all,
  I still don't think you grasp the difference between my arguing for a
  proposition P and my saying that given (by _you_, in _your_ hypothetical
  argument-world, _not_ in the real world) premise X, then in the
  argument-world it would follow that P.  I originally understood you to have
  stipulated that in your argument-world, the premise was that the nature was
  completely deterministic.  I then said that in an argument-world where that
  was the case, it would follow in that argument-world that free will was
  impossible.  More recently, I said that "If you want to change the givens in
  your hypothesis so that Nature isn't completely deterministic, then free
  will _is_ left logically possible".  It now seems that this statement is
  more apt, since you evidently distinguish between nature being deterministic
  and the laws of physics being deterministic.  Either way, my point _remains_
  that the logical possibility of free will is contradicted by any
  argument-world premise that nature is deterministic, and that whether this
  contradiction obtains (in the argument-world) is a datum that "produces
  understanding", just as whether 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:14
 252:155) Brian Holtz: the-constants-dropping-out being contradicted does. 
 
  Now, you may for all I know want to raise the free will discussion from an
  example of the understanding-producing power of findings-of-
  logical-(im)possibility to an actual discussion in which we take and defend
  positions.  That might be fun, since I for one think that there isn't any
  difference between nature being completely deterministic and the laws of
  physics being deterministic. 
 
  Umm, I'll still remain out on my limb and say that Godel's theorems do not
  apply to the physical laws because, I assert, under our physics you cannot
  record the state of the universe on some strict subset of it.  Spatial
  positioning doesn't buy you enough storage since you can't detect the
  position of things with any more precision than is allowed by the
  uncertainty principle. 
 
  Why _couldn't_ the physical constants depend on the dimensionality of the
  universe?  There are already sharp limits to the kinds of tensor geometries
  [sic?] that a unified field theory could fit into. 
 
  By the way, since the semester is winding down, why do _you_ think there is
  anything instead of nothing?  You almost said that the question undercuts
  itself, but when I gave you an example of a similarly nonsensical question
  ("Why didn't time start an hour earlier?") the last you had to say on the
  matter was the glib and facially false answer that time _did_ start an hour
  earlier. 
 - - - - -
 Apr24/90 20:19
 252:158) Brian Holtz: Then are we agreed, David, that your standard of
  "producing understanding" is a little too strict for getting useful
  philosophy done? 
 
  I'm assuming that with someone as philosophically literate as you, a naked
  "or" is understood to be inclusive, not exclusive.  "There are synthetic
  necessary truths" -- call this statement (c) -- is equivalent in meaning to
  the inclusive disjunction of (a) and (c).  Now, there either are or are not
  more synthetic necessary truths besides (a).  If there are, show me one,
  bub. :) If there aren't, then (a) is the only synthetic necessary truth, and
  synthetic necessary truths lose all cachet, making synthetic necessary
  truths a highly uninteresting set of cardinality 1 that are no different
  from being analytic.  Of course, you can still be saved by showing (b) to be
  true, by finding me a synthetic necessary truth.  Which is what I asked you
  for in the first place. 
 
  You're going to have to define free will precisely before I can tell you if
  your notion of free will is ruled out by a completely deterministic physics. 
  The free wil that springs to mind ("the ability to transit to a
  decision-state on a transition not completely dictated by the laws of
  physics and the previous state of the universe"), when combined with ex
  hypothese deterministic physics and the forgivable assumption of
  materialism, is definitely ruled out.  The "free will problem" is one of
  deciding what "free will" is, and 
 - - - - -
 Apr24/90 20:19
 252:159) Brian Holtz: not so much of whether we possess a given sort of "free
  will". 
 
  I didn't say spatial positioning had to be "infinitely fine".  I said that
  you have to have the storage capacity to record the state of the universe in
  a strict subset of it, or else you just don't have an "analogue of Godel
  numbers".  To apply Godel's theorems you have to show that your system
  supports Godel numbering, and a Godel number needs to be big enough to
  encode your system.  But even if you could do it, what would be the impact
  on free will? 
 
  Uhhh, nonsensical answers to nonsensical questions only amuse, not
  frustrate. 
 - - - - -
 Apr26/90 00:40
 252:161) Brian Holtz: You mean you can't imagine a universe in which light
  and em radiation aren't the same thing?  No, I think it's only
  _nomologically_ necessary that the extensions of the things we call "light"
  and "em radiation" are the same. 
 
  Similarly, I can imagine a universe in which "human beings act" isn't true:
  any universe without humans. 
 
  You can editorialize all you want about what it is to "produce
  understanding", but I think you'll find it hard to deny that you know more
  after my opening your eyes to the possibility that the constants could drop
  out, or Putnam opening your eyes to the possibility that intention doesn't
  completely determine extension. 
 
  What I want to know is whether you think your Godel business is an argument
  for just the _possibility_ of free will, not for its _actuality_.  Or
  against the "deterministic closure of physics".  Why not just go back and
  tell me whether you agree that a deterministic physics rules out free will
  as I defined it, given the premise of materialism. 
 
  I really am just not impressed when a particular piece of nonsense finds
  resonance with "religions" associated with some compass direction. :) In
  philosophy, "not making sense" and "feeling right" should never be
  correlates. 
 - - - - -
 Apr28/90 15:38
 252:165) Brian Holtz: David, being "ignorant" of Eastern thought doesn't mean
  I can't recognize nonsense when I read it.  I _never_ forget that the
  rational part of man is "only one part among many", but I don't see why that
  fact should admit irrationality into philosophy.  If my idea of nonsense not
  being good philosophy "doesn't make sense to" you, then perhaps you should
  embrace my idea for its subjective non-sensicality alone? 
 
  Since I don't know what the "deterministic closure of *nature*" _means_, I
  don't feel obligated to defend a position on it.  I _will_ however, be happy
  to defend my previous argument that "a deterministic physics rules out free
  will as I defined it, given the premise of materialism".  By now, though,
  I'm not sure whether you disagree with it or not. 
 
  Putnam's result depended precisely on his twin earth example _being
  possible_; nobody is going to feel obliged to revise his notion of meaning
  to account for an example that is _impossible_!  As for "interesting
  implications" of the constants dropping out, you can't just blithely dismiss
  that I mentioned the possibility as an answer to a variation of _your_
  question of "why there is something rather than nothing".  Anther obvious
  implication is that it leaves the door open for the universe to definitively
  not need a Designer. 
 
  If you don't identify "human beings" with an extension in any particular
  universe, then you have to define "human being" for the proposition to make
  sense.  If your definition stipulates that human 
 - - - - -
 Apr28/90 15:38
 252:166) Brian Holtz: beings act, then the proposition is analytic.  If your
  definition doesn't so stipulate, then there is a possible universe in which
  human beings _don't_ act, and therefore the proposition isn't synthetically
  true.  QED. :) 
 - - - - -
 Apr28/90 18:59
 252:168) Brian Holtz: David, what does it mean for philosophy "to respond to
  humans *as* humans"?  A question like "why is there something instead of
  nothing?" makes no mention of "humans", and so the fact that you and I
  happen to _be_ humans and that humans are gloriously irrational is poor
  justification for giving the question an irrational answer.  I think the
  only philosophy worth doing is philosophy that is valid for _any_ thinker --
  from dolphins to Martians --, and not just for humans. 
 
  I _know_ "Putnam did not seek to *explain* how twin earth was possible";
  that's why I cited him as an example of doing worthwhile philosophy with my
  "wimpy" notion of possibility!  And I _know_ you'd like me to show "how the
  constants drop out" and thereby win a Nobel Prize, but (like Putnam) my
  purposes only require logical possibility.  Yes, "the notion of possibility
  [I] used" does not show how they'd drop out, just as _Putnam's_ example did
  not show how to find or build a twin earth.  If you think it's "clear" that
  we "*could* *not* derive a contradiction" from the idea of a twin earth with
  a macroscopically water-like substance having a complex molecular formula,
  go ahead and _show_ me that.  We'll call it Shafedah's Non-Contradictoriness
  of Twin Earth theorem, the proof of which is no doubt soon to be a standard
  exercise in higher logic classes everywhere... 
 
  Your assertion that an "adequate" definition of "human" would not stipulate
  that humans act and yet would leave it that in all possible 
 - - - - -
 Apr28/90 18:59
 252:169) Brian Holtz: worlds the things so defined _must_ act, is blatant
  hand-waving (especially in light of your admitting not to have any such
  definition!).  The argument I gave in my previous response
 
   If you don't identify "human beings" with an extension in any 
   particular universe, then you have to define "human being" for the 
   proposition to make sense.  If your definition stipulates that human 
   beings act, then the proposition is analytic.  If your definition 
   doesn't so stipulate, then there is a possible universe in which human 
   beings _don't_ act, and therefore the proposition isn't synthetically 
   true.  QED. 
 
  is exhaustive and dispositive. 
 
  The materialist premise I had in mind is that decisions are not influenced
  by supernatural -- i.e., non-material -- things.  Given this and
  deterministic laws of physics, free will as I defined it is logically
  contradicted. 
 - - - - -
 Mar01/90 18:05
 261:21) Brian Holtz: Keith, Tim didn't have "other people's responses
  censored because he didn't agree with them", he had them censored because
  they were blatantly outside his (admittedly screwy) topic. 
 
  Dan, your hypothetical item would be called "Dan Zah's view of the world",
  not "The correct view of the world".  Remember, Tim's item was titled
  "Praise the LORD".  He didn't enter a praise-deities item and then start
  censoring out praise for deities other than his own. 
 
  Len, there's a difference between "discrimination" from among competing
  ideologies and "discrimination" that violates *COU (e.g., maligning people
  for their race, sex, etc.).  Nobody is advocating a right to violate *COU. 
 
  Dave, there's a difference between proselytizing for something and praising
  it.  To the extent that Tim's item was aimed at the choir instead of at
  potential recruits, he should be allowed to keep gate-crashers out.  Lately,
  though, he's been saying that he was recruiting, in which case contrary
  opinions should have been allowed. 
 - - - - -
 Mar02/90 19:23
 261:42) Brian Holtz: Very well said, ID. Hear, hear!
 
  Keith, I didn't know a topic-following response of yours was retired.  Do
  you deny that it was permissible to retire any responses that _were_
  "blatantly outside his topic" (as I assume most were)? 
 
  Dan, if there were no constraints against blatantly mischevious topic drift,
  then any asshole with time on his hands could trash any item he wanted.  M:S
  is a meeting room, and items are conversations.  If you want to talk about
  something that's not covered in any of the existing conversations, don't
  trash them -- start your own. 
 - - - - -
 Mar05/90 21:00
 261:54) Brian Holtz: So, Tony, do you think that you can get in among any set
  of people conversing on the Diag and shout incessantly in their faces? 
  You're misphrasing the issue.  No one's advocating private conversations;
  we're advocating that some _public_ conversations be allowed to have ground
  rules. 
 
  E.I., "censorship" means that a particular person or idea is not allowed
  expression.  No one is advocating censorship.  What we are advocating is
  that people not be allowed to maliciously trash an item because they don't
  like its (non-*COU-violating) topic.  Should I be allowed to trash an item
  about Christman presents because I'm not a Christian?  Should I be allowed
  to trash an item about auto repair because I don't own a car?  Should I be
  allowed to trash a quotes item because I don't like unoriginal thinking? 
 - - - - -
 Apr11/90 21:03
 354:29) Brian Holtz: David, Nozick's thought experiment doesn't control for
  people not wanting to deceive themselves.  If my credo is to be as happy as
  I can be without self-deception, then I am still living according to my
  subjective psychological state (whether I think I've deceived myself is
  ultimately subjective), but I nevertheless would not choose to get in the
  tank. 
 - - - - -
 Apr15/90 22:45
 354:38) Brian Holtz: But, David, I _would_ know that I was about to start
  deceiving myself as I decided to get in the tank, and so _indeed_ "the
  anxiety you feel over decieving yourself in the few seconds before you plug
  into the tank are sufficient to make you not want to plug in".  As proof of
  this, I can state that I believe that if I were to kill myself, I would
  enter an eternal and not unpleasant sleep-like void.  And yet, I don't think
  I would _ever_ choose to kill myself, precisely because of the
  self-deceptive feelings I would have as I did myself in. 
 
  Michael, exactly.  While we can't know for sure which experiences are "real"
  and which "fake", we _can_ know for each decision whether it feels like we
  are deceiving ourselves.  And thats what counts. 
 - - - - -
 Apr21/90 21:41
 354:64) Brian Holtz: David, the difference when making a decision between
  feeling that it will bring on self-deception and feeling that it will not is
  a difference in kind, not degree.  For someone like me who isn't used to
  self-deception, this is decidedly _not_ a "*weak* reason" not to plug in. 
 
  Michael, who's using circular logic?  If I am, it's not of your form, but of
  the following: I wouldn't plug in because I don't make decisions that I know
  will lead to self-deception.  I don't make decisions that I know will lead
  to self-deception because I don't like self-deception.  I don't like
  self-deception because I value truth.  I value truth for its own sake. 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 01:15
 354:67) Brian Holtz: David, self-deception is just a special case of
  deception.  My aversion to _either_ is such that I would never hope to be
  deceived, even deceived against my will.  "Feelings" of being deceived "are
  all that count," indeed! 
 - - - - -
 Apr24/90 20:19
 354:70) Brian Holtz: David, hoping to be deceived counts as the kind of
  feeling that my dedication to truth makes me reject.  So no, I don't hope to
  be deceived.  No, I would never choose to be deceived.  If your question is
  whether my happiness meter would run higher if I woke up in the tank, the
  answer (by definition of the tank) is yes, but that still does not mean I
  carry the hope that it will happen. 
 - - - - -
 Apr26/90 00:43
 354:75) Brian Holtz: No, David, because it's clear that in addition to not
  wanting to _feel_ deceived, I don't want to _be_ deceived, either. 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 20:28
 380:15) Brian Holtz: Arrrrrgh, Neon, you cut me to the quick!  "Cynical"?  A
  cynic believes the worst, but a simpleton like me can only be a _skeptic_,
  who believes the simplest.  That's why all my theories are simple!
 
  Oprah will have to wait; I'm under contract to do my own show, sort of a
  Morton Downey Jr. with a William F. Buckley facade...   I'll chop people up,
  but in a sweet, pseudo-high-brow kinda way...  ;)
 
  <sigh> Dan, as I said before 'way back in the 143rd response to this item: 
   - - - - - 
   Apr23/90 09:22 
   380:143) Brian Holtz: Dan, how many times do I have to repeat myself? 
    It was only in Meet:Students Winter '89 that I last explained to you, 
    as I quote: 
    - - - - - 
    Nov11/89 21:07 
    88:37) Brian Holtz: Mr. Zahs, if anyone is going to parody me and 
     my penchant for digging up quotes or demanding documentation, it's 
     gonna be _me_, got it? 
 
  When, oh Lord, WHEN will I have to stop repeating this for you, Dan?  When
  the mountains have been washed to the seas?  When hell freezes over?  When
  M:S pedants stop complaining in best rhetorical-martyr style that their
  self-quoted comments are being consistently ignored?  When?!
 
  Tom, Al Franken is no more, but all that Al Franken was, I am.  "For lo, in
  his five-less-than-thirtieth year, Brian laid down the tools of the software
  carpenter, and went unto Al the Self-Agrandizer, who was in those times
  agrandizing himself near the waters of the River Huron (which washed the
  banks of a certain village of scholars frequented by 
 - - - - -
 Apr23/90 20:29
 380:16) Brian Holtz: second-rate comics).  And when He approachedeth the
  Self-Agrandizer, a single dove appeared, and through parted clouds a Voice
  declared, 'Behold Me, in Whom I am well pleased', and all were amazed at
  Him, e'en so that Al drew near to Him and said, 'Master, I am not fit to end
  a run-on sentence of Yours with a humble quote of mine', and Al was right."
 
  Brett, I suppose it's only fair at this point that I let you in on "my"
  secret, and thank you for your helpful (albeit unconscious) cooperation in
  this experiment.  You see, Brian Holtz does not exist.  He is a composite
  character concocted by a panel of world-reknowned rhetoricians under a
  National Endowment for the Humanities grant.  The purpose of the grant is to
  see whether purely through cheap and underhanded rhetorical technique
  undergraduates at an estimable research university can be persuaded to hold
  utterly false beliefs.  You will all shortly be receiving a questionaire
  allowing us to evaluate your beliefs.  Please continue to ignore the typist
  behind the curtain... 
 
  Wendy, I can't make any promises about love children, but I hold
  well-publicized (though sparsely-attended) groupie auditions, on a
  first-come first-served basis.