  Meeting
Report
June 6, 2003
Taner Edis
The Ghost in the Universe
 Our
final formal meeting of the 2002-2003 season took place on Friday, June 6.
Our speaker was Taner Edis, an Assistant Professor of Physics at Truman
State University in Missouri. He is the author of the recently published
book, "The Ghost in the Universe," which was made available for sale to
our members before the meeting and which he discussed during the meeting.
Dr. Edis dealt with the idea of the existence or
non-existence of God and whether the God concept adds anything to our
understanding of the universe or of the natural processes that take place
within it. He remarked that religions make top-down assumptions about the
universe and that he takes a bottom-up approach. He rejects the New Age
approaches as well as those of traditional religions. After criticizing
the idea of "intelligent design" and of what he called the liberal evasion
that holds that "God works through natural processes." he concluded that
the idea of God adds nothing to explaining the physical universe. Random
changes and Darwinian natural selection are the explanations he accepts as
real. To Dr. Edis, "Randomness is fundamental. This is no accident."
Report
prepared by Wayne Luney, HAGSA Recorder
Click below to return to the
list of 2003 Meetings or to go to the previous or next meeting report.
|