Pierre Laplace was a great mathematician and a scientist. He described the equations for the motion of celestial heavens by extending Newton's work. When he presented his work to Napoleon, Napoleon was very impressed with Laplace's work. But Napoleon asked Laplace, "where is God in all of this?". Laplace replied back to him, "I had no need for that hypothesis".
This is the position I have regarding God. It is an unnecessary hypothesis. We do not need to assume God to make sense of the world. Why invent a hypothesis which does not do anything to help us. In fact, with God the world makes less sense. The moment we introduce God into our assumption the world becomes more complicated. There are lots of unanswerable questions to ask. Where did God come from? Why did God decide to create the universe? Why does God cause evil in the world? Why would God choose a few select group of people as being his people? What is God exactly? And so forth. We have two options. Either do not assume a God, make some sense of the world, and what we do not know we simply assert humbly that we do not know. Or we can assume a God and make less sense of the world that way. It is unreasonable to invent a hypothesis which complicates manners.
Do you believe that there is a giant talking penis on planet Pluto? You do not even think about it! That belief is so unnecessary for you to make sense of the world that you do not even consider it. You do not reject it. You simply do not even think of it as a respectable view to have to understand the world. That is exactly what God is to me. Something entirely irrelevant and unnecessary to make sense of the world.
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If I understand your post correctly, you believe that God is a giant talking penis on Pluto. But this can not be so because Pluto is not a planet:
ReplyDelete"Originally classified as a planet, Pluto is now considered the largest member of a distinct population known as the Kuiper belt"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
"If I understand your post correctly, you believe that God is a giant talking penis on Pluto. But this can not be so because Pluto is not a planet.":
ReplyDeleteWhy did I juxtapose the words "planet" and "Pluto" together? It sounds redundant. I did it because I wanted to see exactly how many people would sink so low to tell me that Pluto is not a planet. Indeed, I was correct when I suspected there to be some people who would feel the need to tell me that Pluto is not a planet.
The thing is the distinction between what a planet is and is not is arbitrary. Its definition does not change the actual state of Pluto. It is just a definition. Thus, the whole discussion about Pluto is trivial.
Pointing out to people that Pluto is not a planet reminds me of people who have to point out to me that a whale is not a fish (http://skepticbutjewish.blogspot.com/2010/06/whale-is-fish.html). Or people who have to correct grammer mistakes. Because what this does is moves away from the actual important discussion to some aribtrary irrelevant point.
I tip my hat to you, sir. That is some funny shit
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