[MD] new blog

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> Perhaps your non believers would like to address the question Pirsig posed
> in Lila:
> 
> "Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon,
> hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize
> themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? If we leave a
> chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of 
> nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen
> and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. 
> It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use
> and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into
> a 
> chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of 
> predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the
> sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic 
> compounds. That's a scientific fact.
> 
> "The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth
> causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's 
> energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something
> else. 
> What is it?"  (Lila, 11)
> 
> [Krimel]
> You really are shameless to keep trotting out this transparently bogus
> quote. It should be an embarrassment to Pirsig to have it repeated. I
> seriously can't imagine anyone who studies biology or basic physics
> failing
> to understand that life on earth is a direct result of the constant
> influx
> of solar radiation on our planet's surface. 

Unfortunately that doesn't answer Pirsig's questions. It's like saying 
anyone who studies theology knows God exists.