[MD] new blog

[Platt Holden]

> 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?

Hi Steve,

No. I like Pirsig's theory. Thanks for asking.

Regards,
Platt