[MD] new blog

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

> Steve P:
>
>> First of all, the blog I am working on is not aimed directly at
>> convincing theists that they have a bunch of wacky beliefs that we'd
>> all be better off if they dropped. That is indirectly part of my goal,
>> but the blog is not to attract theists to the discussion. I want to
>> converse with other non believers in an ongoing  strategy session that
>> would include the sort of suggestion you made.
>
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)

Steve:
I also love the above passage. I think his question points to a 
creative aspect of the universe (Dynamic Quality) that science needs to 
try to incorporate into it's theories. We may never have answers to 
these questions, but this sounds to me like the sort of process that 
science has come up with better and better explanations for in the 
past.

Do you already have answer that you'd like to share? Since your 
question was addresses to nonbelievers, are you suggesting that the 
answer to these questions is God?

Regards,
Steve

atheistichope.blogspot.com