(September 5, 2014 at 1:26 am)Michael Wrote: Number 1 is our universal experience (even quantum effects require a quantum vacuum with fluctuating energy, and Pauli's exclusion principle shows us how even quantum events are interconnected in mysterious ways).If we are basing the validity of the two points on our universal experience, why would we then conclude something that is completely outside of that experience? I can see where a person would think that everything must have a beginning, and therefore a cause, because of how we perceive and interpret our experiences of the world. But why would that lead us to "a being of incomprehensible intellect and power and complexity must have always existed and created all things"?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
