On Aug 28, 7:57 am, Meltdarok aol.com> wrote:

*spam newsgroups removed*

No, it doesn't, but the evidence does. HG was being condescendingly
diplomatic when he said that "I don't know", because the truth is we
know a lot more about this question than you think.

While it's true that we do not know absolutely whether "the
environment consist[s] of a living entity", we also don't know
absolutely whether or not the earth is really a giant goblin, or
whether or not airplanes fly with the assistance of invisible
unicorns. Knowledge does not have to be absolute to qualify as
knowledge.

An enormous and overwhelming mass of evidence supports the theory of
evolution, which tells us that complex and intelligent life arises
from simple beginnings. Therefore regardless of how little knowledge
we have about the beginnings of the universe, one thing we can be as
sure as anything about is that intelligence wasn't there.

Now, if we accept the possibility of multiple universes, evolution
doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility that intelligence created
*this* universe. But it does tell us that such an intelligence must
have evolved through a similar process in its own universe, so
regardless of the number of universes it is almost certain that right
back at the beginning there was no intelligence, and any such
"creator" of this universe is not worthy of the title "God".

Furthermore, although the theory of evolution is not directly
applicable to non-living things, it does have an indirect
applicability which is also supported by the laws of thermodynamics,
although the extent of this applicability is debatable. But, it
certainly appears that apart from life, complexity in general arises
from simplicity. The evidence suggests that at the beginning of this
universe there was a highly ordered and simplistic state, and that
disorder and complexity arose from that. Since intelligence is
necessarily complex, this is further evidence that there was no
intelligence at the beginning.

It also suggests something else, which is that complexity arises from
natural processes, and *not* from some information content inherent in
that initial simplistic state. Thus, even if an intelligence *did*
create this particular universe, they would have had very, very little
influence over exactly how complexity arose from it. In particular,
the lack of information content in the initial simplistic state means
that such a creator would not have been able to embed sufficient
information in there to cause, for instance, the appearance of human
life, or even of particular solar systems or galaxies. Therefore even
if it was true that this universe was created, that creator would have
very little, if anything, to tell us about "why we are here" or any
other such questions that people think would be useful to put to a
creator because our particular existence would almost certainly not
have been in such a creator's plan. The evidence suggests that even if
this universe was created, our existence in it is just as accidental.
If this universe was created, then apart from possibly setting the
basic ground rules, that creator would almost certainly have only a
minimal influence on the development of this universe, and almost
certainly would not be able to intervene in it in a later date. In
other words, even if there was an intelligence that created (or "is",
to use your bizarre phrase) this universe, it is almost certainly not
even remotely resembling the type of intelligence that you desparately
want it to be.

What you are engaging in is indeed pseudoscience; you are merely using
words that sound scientific in order to prop up your belief in a
cosmic intellligence, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence
that completely denies this ridiculous idea of yours.

Agnosticism is not a rational response to the question of the
existence of an intelligent and interventionary creator. Not only is
there plenty of evidence against such an idea, but there is no
evidence for it. The old platitude that "absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence" is true enough, but this turns out to be a
distraction. If there is no evidence in favour of such an idea, then
what this means is that there are a potentially infinite number of
possible variations on that idea, all utterly without support, which
means that the probability of any particular one of them being true is
intergalactically small. It is enormously irrational to give any
credence to this kind of idea simply because "it might be true, we
don't know". If we really don't know, then random theories about
origins which have no supporting evidence are by default almost
certainly not true, leaving "agnosticism in principle" as an
irrational position with respect to them. You can only give your silly
idea credence through a "might be true, might not be true" argument if
you deliberately fail to take into account the millions of potential
other silly ideas.

In other words, you're talking complete crap. Again.

Erwin Hessle, 8=3