Libertarian wrote:
D’OH!
And, of course, it goes without saying that I also got Vonnegut’s definition of “chronosynclastic infundibulum” wrong, as he used the term in The Sirens of Titan. That’s what I get for talking about a book I’ve never read. :o
Here’s what an online book review says about Vonnegut’s use of the term in The Sirens of Titan:
Bear in mind that she may not be a creationist. It’s the way to bet, of course, but there are a whole passle of equally silly theories as creationism about the origin of the Universe. What the creationists like to say is that if the BB is wrong, they must be right. This is fallacious, as is almost all of their arguments.
However, there is copious evidence that the Universe is older than 6000 years, from many different fields of science. Send her to the talk.origins website at http://www.talkorigins.org.
The only estimate that I have heard, from some old Philosophy video, is: 1 in 10,000,000,000[sup]24[/sup].
FWIW, this conflict between god and evil led to an interesting quote by skeptic David Hume:
“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. If he is both able and willing? whence then is evil?
But anyhoo…Carry on.
Poor Hume. He fell into a classic converse accident. He looks at a single frame in the middle of a reel of film, and draws conclusions about its plot and its outcome.
Yeah, imagine the nerve of the guy, thinking that God wouldn’t neccesarily be bound by the same constraints of time as the rest of us.
Also, I always thought the Converse accident somehow involved Larry Johnson’s Gran’mama character. 
He isn’t. So shake the constraints from your imagination and realize. From the reference frame of the Absolute, it’s finished already.
Yeah, I get they difference even if they don’t. I do know for a fact that she is a creationist, from previous conversations with her.
I love your website, by the way. I used it to deprogram some of my more credulous students after they watched the Moon Landing Hoax special on Fox.
A philosopher who teaches at Notre Dame, Alvin Plantinga, has given a very good defense of the proposition that an omniscient, all-good, all-powerful God and evil can co-exist. This is known as the Free Will Defense.
Two of his books, according to this U-Mich professor’s class notes, The Nature of Necessity and God, Freedom, and Evil contain the details of his argument.
This argument is considered powerful and sucessful.
However, this link http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/niclas_berggren/theodicy.html purports to find flaws in Plantinga’s argument.
I am more of a philosophaster than philosopher and, therefore, will not attempt to evaluate either stance. I would suggest that this is fodder for another thread.
[/hijack]
Tinker
Cyberhwk wrote:
What a strange way to write 1 in 10[SUP]240[/SUP]…
Interesting, I’d never heard it suggested that God is incapable of understanding our frame of reference. Which is to me what that seems to indicate.
Of course, it could also mean that God can and does understand what we go through and just chooses to fix it on his own scale, which although not neccesarily evil, certainly displays a slight lack of empathy. But again, what do I know?
Er, try 10[sup]34[/sup], tracer . . . or was that part of a joke that I missed?
Perhaps it is rather we who display that lack. Perhaps there is a suffering beyond mere synaptic discharges. Perhaps our children cannot understand what we suffer on their behalf. Just perhaps.
No, tracer is right… it’s 10[sup]240[/sup]. Either way, it’s one helluva bizarre way to write it.
Quix
Hmm.
10[sup]10[/sup] x 10[sup]24[/sup] = 10[sup]10+24[/sup]
Try as I might, I keep coming up with 10[sup]34[/sup]
Maybe it’s that “big-bang” math aubries’ student uses… 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by xenophon41 *
**
Well, yeah, if you do 10[sup]10[/sup] x 10[sup]24[/sup] you will get 10[sup]34[/sup]. But that’s not the problem. The problem was 10,000,000,000[sup]24[/sup]. Try writing it out (or at least think about writing it out) as 10,000,000,000 x 10,000,000,000 x 10,000,000,000… and then count up all the zeroes. You should come up with 240, i.e., 10[sup]240[/sup].
I think. 
Quix
Doh!
(10[sup]10[/sup])[sup]24[/sup] ?
Well, I see as I type this that several have already responded, but here is my agreement with Quix.
It ain’t 10[sup]10[/sup] x 10[sup]24[/sup] = 10[sup]10+24[/sup]. Its (10[sup]10[/sup])[sup]24[/sup] = 10[sup]240[/sup].
Tinker
Dang! My post was supposed to come just after xenophon41’s Doh!
Oh, well!