Bertvan@aol.com writes
in message <2f.805edef.26a1f079@aol.com>:
> Hi Chris,
>
> I might claim that since free will and design in nature are
> obvious, the "burden of proof" is upon anyone who disagrees to
> prove otherwise. However, I doubt anyone would pay much
> attention to me.
Exactly, that's why you have the burden of proof. It would
be the same if you or I were in a room full of flatearthers.
We could insist that the burden of proof was on them, but they
just wouldn't pay attention to us, would they.
Burden of proof isn't assigned by anyone, it just falls on the
person who wants to change the minds of others. (Generally the
majority is not as interested in changing the minds of the
minority)
Burden of proof in this instance might mean defining free will
to mean something at all -- if we don't make decision based on
things inside the universe, we make them based on things
outside the universe? And we all know design looks obvious,
but when we look deeper we discover human perception can't really
be trusted to distinguish design from non-design. So we move
on to other principles and methods.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jul 15 2000 - 15:47:45 EDT