<< (DAVE 4/16) Farrell: Of course it is. If I fill a bucket with
marbles and then toss it in the air, they behave in a random
fashion - where they land is ultimately chance. Yes, they are
subject to gravity, their mass, density, speed, friction, resistance
and even the kind of surface they land on - as well as the
placement in the bucket and the force I exerted to toss them.
All of these "laws" they abide by. But they had to be in the
bucket first. I put them there. I tossed them. I decided when
and where and how and even why.
Now you believe in the marbles, and in the "laws" they abide
by, but seem to dodge the issue of the bucket and its filling.
Why did your bucket empty of marbles? How did it even get
there? It just "happened? Well, it exploding just "happened"
then? And whatever "happens" as a result is sheer randomness -
there is absolutely no exterior influence at all on it. >>
TILL
Because I erase Dave's postings unless the subject window indicates that
they are directed to me, I missed seeing this until I saw it in Dardedar's
response to Dave. Can Dave not see that the marbles in his example did not
behave "randomly"? None of them floated up into the clouds and on up to the
moon or flew parallel to the ground in a low-level orbit of the earth or
just hung indefinitely suspended in midair. They all fell to the earth
because of physical laws that the marbles are subject to. If it were
possible to know every scientific factor in the angle and force of the toss
of the marbles, it would be possible to know how high each one would go and
where each one would fall. That's because matter doesn't behave randomly;
it behaves in accordance with the laws of physics.
Where did the laws come from, Dave asks? Well, they came from the same
place his omni-max Yahweh came from.
(Thanks to whoever coined the term "omni-max." I can't remember who it was,
but I like it.)
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net