Mon, 2005-12-19 22:23
I would like to challenge your assumption That in order to be a theist, you must be thinking irrationaly. You see I have been sort of an atheist for most of my life. Not so much an atheist, but someone who didn't really give my personal beliefs much thought. So I really didn't have any, one way or the other. What I did put much time into was physics and astronomy. I'm certainly no genius, but I have read books on Einsteins theory of relativity (special and general), but it was when I was reading a book on string theory, that triggered a thought. The book was talking about parallel universes having different gravitational forces and all kind of crazy stuff that I'm not sure I can really buy into. Or perhaps it is just over my head, Ill be the first one to admit it. But the phrase "different gravitational forces" hit me like a ton of bricks. What if gravity was different. Even slightly. When two objects of mass double their distance, their gravitational force gets cut in half. I thought to myself, what if intead of being cut in half (.500) it was cut by (.400). Nothing would be here. The planets wouldn't be in orbit, so nothing else could be as we know it.
Take this thought of a natural law like gravity being different, and apply it to any law in physics. The same thing would happen. We wouldn't exist. Change any rule of quantum mechanics in any slight way, the atom won't exsist (at least the way we need it for matter), nor would we.
So what is logical? to say all the rules of physics and quantum mechanics, and science in general, exsist exactly the way they do by mere chance. Or was set forth by some creator. If it is by chance, then your saying that there must be an infinate amount of universes each with a different set of laws for physics and so on. That way, having an infinate amount of combinations of physical laws, eventually you would have a universe like ours. Or they could just be one universe that had its laws of science set forth by a creator. To me logic dictates that the simplest solution is the correct one.
Not everyone that believes in god, does it for the promise of heaven (i dont even plan for next week). Some of us got there logically