Re: virus: Does God really exist?

Vicki Rosenzweig (rosenzweig@hq.acm.org)
Wed, 21 Aug 96 12:49:00 PDT


The telepathy hypothesis is interesting, but I can see
at least two things wrong with it. One is that early humans
were not primarily predators--they were primarily gatherers
and scavengers, and most of the hunting they did was of
small animals like rabbits. The skills needed for collecting
shellfish, trapping rabbits, digging up root vegetables, and
gathering berries are rather different from the skills needed
to run down a zebra. The other problem is that, if we assume
for a moment that there was such an inter-group telepathic
connection, it would have been at least as valuable in keeping
a social group together once we settled down as agriculturalists,
so there's no reason for it to atrophy.

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Tedlick seems to be redefining religion so broadly as not to
be terribly useful. You can say I believe that the train I take to
work will be able to stop on time. It's closer to the truth to say
that I know that it almost always is (based on past experience
of subway performance), and that I know that I need to travel
to and from my job (or move much closer, travel on foot--which
means putting faith in a lot of other people's brakes--and spend
most of my income on housing), so I take that somewhat
calculated risk. Anyone who has faith in our technology needs
to study it more (try comp.risks).
As for "a creation implies a creator," that's
tautological but not helpful, because we have no reason other
than habit to think of the universe as a "creation."

Vicki
rosenzweig@acm.org