[Buddha-l] Fighting creationism

[SJZiobro at cs.com]

In a message dated 4/2/2007 3:46:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, rhayes at unm.edu 
writes: 
> On Sunday 01 April 2007 17:10, SJZiobro at cs.com wrote:
> 
> >For
> >instance, the that there must be a point (outside of time) where what was
> >not came into being on account of a transcendent Cause that is not one
> >thing among others is entirely reasonable when contrasted with the idea of
> >an infinite regress.
> 
> Surely there are three possibilities. 1) The world came into being out of 
> nothing. 2) The world has always existed and therefore was never created. 3) 
> 
> Every given state of the world emerged from a previously existing state, and 
> 
> no matter how far back one goes one will never find a first state.
> 
> No one has yet succeeded in convincing me that any one of these scenarios is 
> 
> entirely reasonable in contrast to the others. They all seem equally absurd 
> and untenable. So perhaps the Buddha's advice was not bad when he 
> recommended 
> that we not try to answer the question of how the world got here, since 
> nothing of practical importance hinges on the answer.
> 

Surely all three posibiities are reasonable and one can educe arguments to 
show why they are so.  Apparently, this thread was a joke, however, so perhaps 
it's wise to leave it alone and leave people smiling.

Stan   
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