Eternity Week #2: The Alternatives

[redcrosse]

So today I'm going to try to rough up materialism and pantheism a bit before moving on. This is not really on topic, and may seem downright mean to some people who have accepted the modern idea that to deny someone's beliefs is to make a personal attack. But still, chances are, if I don't, and I just start talking about eternity, all the

Comments

[funwithrage]

It is quite true that some people are not drawn to metaphysical questions, and that's just fine. I don't see a reason why we all have to be theologians and philosophers, so long as people who are not understand that they are asking possibly useful questions and may find useful answers. But nonetheless, just because I'm not interested in calculus doesn't mean I get to say that the questions posed by calculus are invalid.

Yeah, that would be my problem with Dawkins et al right there. (Sort of, bathetically enough, the same problem I have with people who bash the stuff I read/play/thing. "Yeah, I get that *you're* not interested. You don't have to be. I've yet to meet a Russian novel I could get through. It doesn't mean there isn't value there.") I have a smidgen of sympathy, because I *think* they're (over)reacting to the fact that people want to make laws based on these things they don't get or care about.* But only a smidgen, because I really don't like being compared to people who believe in freaking werewolves. Bah.

When Occam's Razor is horribly misused is when it starts attacking ideas with explanatory value simply because they are not obvious, visible, or intuitive. Einstein's spacetime is WAY less intuitive than the idea of ether, way less "simple." And yet, it fits the data of our ridiculously complex world much better.

Awesome. Thank you.

*I would get a little irked if, say, people who really cared about CS tried to pass a law that said we, I don't know, all had to talk in FORTRAN...the analogy wildly breaks down about here.