Date sent: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 15:20:55 -0700 (PDT)

The parts Roger has written are in italics. The parts Toby has written are in normal text. 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Toby: > and you don't need free will either, in fact free will creates more problems than anything else.

Roger: Free will is easy to accomidate. Bacteria have free will, in the sense that they actively seek out better places to live.

puhlease !!! be intellectually honest, this is not will, it is pure instinct. Reproduction and irritability are not free will.

If by Free Will you mean choosing between good and evil, there is no good and evil in a world without an Intelligent Designer.

If by Free Will you mean conciousness. That's still a neat mystery. What is it, where is it? These are unanswered. These are not questions science shies away from, science simply doesn't have enough information yet to answer them.

do you agree that it is more problematic than helpful, if there was not free will, we would have ther greeny's polution free world and maybe "free love" too!

> Free Will is inneficient and more painful than ignorance, how has it survived?

What an interesting association, I would not have linked these two. How is ignorance more efficient than Free Will?

see previous answer.plus it leads to morality and religion, your bugaboo for mass violence and war.

> where are the humans w/o free will, those who operate only on instinct?

In mental institutions. The technical term for them used to be idiots and morons. I don't know if those terms have been euphamized by now. but they should do better, no artificial morality to slow them down.

>> Let me ask you: [old, size]

> good question, better question what is outside it? what is man's fate one solar life or 45 billion years from now?

OK, I've covered age and size on the other e-mail, clearly you haven't given these too much thought. Because of my engineering background, I have, and, as I cover in my other e-mail... size is a sizeable issue.

I have certainly thought about the age of the earth and the univ, what makes you think i haven't? size does matter, but i won't be the one solving it.

What is outside the universe?

>From a science point of view: As best we can tell, we don't interact with the "outside" of the universe in any way, so the question is irrelevant. This however, is not an axiom of the scientific method, it's just the observed state.

how do you know it doesn't affect us? plus it was created, therefore what is outside COULD matter.

If by outside you mean... where do souls go? Well... finding a place for souls makes a mess of *any* universe construct -- Intelligent or otherwise -- because there isn't any logically consistent place to put them. Take the Intelligent Design location -- Heaven -- as an example...

The design of Heaven as described by most people I've talked to (make that... *all* people I've talked to) is deeply inconsistent -- no one has been able to describe to me a believable version of heaven.

it is by definition undefinable, it is not part of this world, hence the relevance of what is outside this U.

As I've mentioned in earlier discussions, the human form is deeply and subtly shaped by living in an Earth environment, yet most people I have talked with insist that their Earthly body will be their Heavenly body as well -- insist very hard on this point. But, if Heaven is not *identical* to Earth, then the human body will be ill-adapted to Heaven.

You have no basis for this principle, no evidence,

If the human body is changed to adapt it to Heavenly conditions, then the nervous system and the mind will have to be adapted, too. If the mind is adapted... we are getting into some seriously subtle surgery here! Are you going to remember how to swing a baseball bat, if Heaven has no gravity? If you're going to take your body to Heaven, who is the archangel doctor that is going to fix it so it works right in Heaven? I've never heard him mentioned.

so what, you wouldn't believe it if you heard it, you already KNOW that heaven can't exist because you can't visulize it? boy that leaves alot of potential medical and sci advances impossible because your imagination limits the universe's potential. (I am glad you weren't born a hundred years ago or five humdred, no medicine no computers no elevators no air conditioners

Second point: which set of atoms are you going to get for your body? The atoms in your body have been shared with many other bodies. Does God make new atoms to make your body with when you come to Heaven, or do you bring along a set of Earthly atoms that you have previously used? How does God split your Earthly atoms between you and others who have used them?

again your are totally in the box, as you guys like to say

The problem *I* have is that Intelligent Designers don't see these Heaven-designing problems as difficult problems, but I do.

what me we white man, when have i (and many others) said these are not thorny problems.

No matter how I envision Heaven, when given the constaints that are described to me by Christian believers, I can't come up with anything consistent.

again you are poor fact checker who are these Christian "authorities" ladder day saint cabbies? jehova withnesses?

So, where do Souls go? Intelligent Design or no, I don't know. They just don't fit anywhere.

no where in this world, so you see outside this universe is relevant,

does anything outside this univ exist?

more importantly, COULD IT EXIST

use your imagination.

The parts Roger has written are in italics. The parts Toby has written are in normal text. 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36