[Buddha-l] life force vis a vis Xianity & Hinduism

[curt]

Be careful: people often pick up Ockham's razor by the blade
rather than by the handle.

It is not impossible to ask and answer "why" questions scientifically.
For example: why is the earth's atmosphere approximately 20%
oxygen? That question is a perfectly good starting point for a scientific
investigation. So is this question: "why do some organisms strongly
resemble each other while others bear little resemblence?" Or this one:
"why are all living things composed of cells?" Or this: "why do all
cells share the ability to carry out the process of glycolosis?" These
are all very important questions - some of them have quite interesting
answers.

The last question above - "why do all cells share the ability to carry
out the process of glycolysis?" is actually one of the more dramatic
demonstrations of evolution. All cells have DNA to code for a
group of enzymes that enable the cell to carry out the "primitive"
metabolic process of glycolysis. This is a metabolic process that
does not rely on oxygen. Up until three billion years or so ago there
was little if any oxygen in the earth's atmosphere - and all living
things on earth relied primarily on glycolysis. But then green plants
came along and "invented" photosynthesis - which creates oxygen
as a waste product. A little while later "respiration" was invented by
another group of organisms who had figured out how to use this
nasty oxygen as fuel. The clear implication is that all currently living
cells share a common genetic heritage - because they all inherit
this DNA that makes glycolysis possible.

Now the question "why does everything exist?" requires further
clarification. First of all one must clearly state whether or not
one is assuming that everything must have a cause or a reason. Only
once there is that assumption does the conundrum arise that
Erik alludes to. One can avoid that by positing the existence of
a "first cause" that itself requires no cause. Buddhism (or at least
some forms of Buddhism) and Platonism (or at least some forms
of Platonism) share this assumption of a primal uncaused cause.
Some forms of Platonism go even further and posit the existence
of something before even that - something that is neither caused
by anything nor causes anything else. Both Buddhists and Platonists
usually dodge the issue that once one has posited one uncaused
cause there is no reason why you have to stop there. Epicureans,
on the other hand - implicitly accepted the possibility of many
(even a great many - even infinite) uncaused causes - by accepting
the role of randomness in ordinary phenomenon (as opposed to
only accepting the role of one single uncaused cause at the very
very very beginning).

Lastly, Ockham's so called razor is basically a red herring. What
people are usually striving to articulate when they start talking
about Ockham's razor should rather be framed in terms of "strong"
versus "weak" and "testable" versus "untestable" hypotheses.
Untestestable hypotheses should be rejected and strong ones
should be preferred over weak ones. If you really must bring
Ockham into it then what he said was "entities should not be
multiplied unecessarily". So it is permissable to "mutliply"
"entities" - but only so long as it is "necessary". And if you
really want to be accurate he said: "Pluralitas non est ponenda
sine neccesitate." 

- Curt

Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> Jim Peavler schreef:
>
>>
>> On Aug 22, 2005, at 8:08 AM, Stanley J. Ziobro II wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hence intelligent design theory has no place in a science class, 
>> unless the teacher spends the first day of class describing why 
>> intelligent design is not science and will not be discussed further.
>>
>>> Ockham's razor here explains what something is; it gives no clue as 
>>> to its
>>> "why".  When seeking to express the "why" of something simply 
>>> describing
>>> emperically random morphologies does not meet the point.
>>
>>
>>
>> Ockam's entire point was that science should NOT try to explain "why" 
>> but focus entirely on "what".  "What" is the subject matter of 
>> science; "Why" is the subject matter of religion.
>>
>> One of the big problems of science in Ockam's day was understanding 
>> motion. Why does an arrow continue to fly even though it is clearly 
>> not being moved by a "mover"? This problem had been around for 
>> centuries and there were several thousand pages of speculation in 
>> Greek, Latin, Arabic, and even in the vernacular languages of the 
>> western world. Ockam's razor said in effect, "Why doesn't matter. 
>> What we care about is where the arrow lands and how much force it 
>> lands with. So we will try to understand the strength of the original 
>> force that sets the arrow in flight, the mass and shape of the arrow, 
>> the angle at which the arrow must be fired in order to hit the target 
>> we want to hit, and whether it will arrive with enough force to do 
>> the amount of damage we wish to inflict on the target.  Answering 
>> these questions is the realm of science. (However, being disciplined 
>> in trying to understand the "what" of arrows in flight eventually led 
>> to an understanding of the "why" as well. I doubt that that will not 
>> happen to such questions "why do we exist" or "why is there evil in 
>> the world" and similar questions (many of which the Buddha refused to 
>> entertain.))"
>>
> Thanks Jim for clearing up the concept of theory, I agree. About this 
> why I'd like to play the sceptic.
> Why does everything exist?
> Because of something that exists or something that doesn't exist. The 
> first reason is begging the question, the second is tantamount to 
> saying there's no reason at all.
>
>
> Erik
>
>
> www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
>
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