Of course I'm terminally biased.Those memes have a lot to answer for.

Robert Tulip wrote:

ant wrote:The clockwork hypothesis was retired long ago, Robert. Either you know it and wont accept it as retired or you are attempting to defend Laplace where no defense of him is required.

No, the clockwork idea has not been retired. Quantum physics shows that science cannot predict the future, but not that any acausal events are possible, which would be needed to refute determinism.

Meandering along as usual, the reason Laplace has come up here is that ant said “Science itself is not in the business of hypothesizing the existence/non existence of a God.” Laplace, one of the most famous scientists in history, indicated that the existence of God has no place in scientific astronomy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Sim ... ace#Quotes

Now admittedly, ant has a fair point that saying the hypothesis of God is not needed is not the same thing as advancing the hypothesis that God does not exist...,.

A frequently cited but apocryphal interaction between Laplace and Napoleon purportedly concerns the existence of God. A typical version is provided by Rouse Ball:[8]

Laplace went in state to Napoleon to present a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.") Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses. ("Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.")

In 1884, however, the astronomer Hervé Faye[54][55] affirmed that this account of Laplace's exchange with Napoleon presented a "strangely transformed" (étrangement transformée) or garbled version of what had actually happened. It was not God that Laplace had treated as a hypothesis, but merely his intervention at a determinate point:

In fact Laplace never said that. Here, I believe, is what truly happened. Newton, believing that the secular perturbations which he had sketched out in his theory would in the long run end up destroying the solar system, says somewhere that God was obliged to intervene from time to time to remedy the evil and somehow keep the system working properly. This, however, was a pure supposition suggested to Newton by an incomplete view of the conditions of the stability of our little world. Science was not yet advanced enough at that time to bring these conditions into full view. But Laplace, who had discovered them by a deep analysis, would have replied to the First Consul that Newton had wrongly invoked the intervention of God to adjust from time to time the machine of the world (la machine du monde) and that he, Laplace, had no need of such an assumption. It was not God, therefore, that Laplace treated as a hypothesis, but his intervention in a certain place.

Laplace's younger colleague, the astronomer François Arago, who gave his eulogy before the French Academy in 1827,[56] told Faye that the garbled version of Laplace's interaction with Napoleon was already in circulation towards the end of Laplace's life. Faye writes:[54][55]

I have it on the authority of M. Arago that Laplace, warned shortly before his death that that anecdote was about to be published in a biographical collection, had requested him [Arago] to demand its deletion by the publisher. It was necessary to either explain or delete it, and the second way was the easiest. But, unfortunately, it was neither deleted nor explained.

The Swiss-American historian of mathematics Florian Cajori appears to have been unaware of Faye's research, but in 1893 he came to a similar conclusion.[57] Stephen Hawking said in 1999,[40] "I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God does not exist. It's just that he doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science."

The only eyewitness account of Laplace's interaction with Napoleon is an entry in the diary of the British astronomer Sir William Herschel. Since this makes no mention of Laplace saying, "I had no need of that hypothesis," Daniel Johnson[58] argues that "Laplace never used the words attributed to him." Arago's testimony, however, appears to imply that he did, only not in reference to the existence of God.

Robert Tulip wrote:You are so funny ant!

It does not matter if the Laplace statement is authentic. What matters is that it has been widely accepted as so by scientists and philosophers and the secular world, because it is a compelling summary of the modern rational outlook on reality. We have no need to speculate about an imaginary creator because a natural materialist explanation is far more predictive, elegant, parsimonious and rational. The productive area of speculation is psychological and political - why does the big lie of God remain so pervasive?

Naturally we can expect your evangelical friends to spin and distort the Laplace story in all manner of ways to try to get back some credibility for their imaginary supernatural best friend. I don't for a minute believe the account you have given above is based on anything other than fraud and intimidation, like most Christian bullshit. Even Laplace himself, like Descartes and Darwin, could well have partly recanted his coherent rational view under social pressure.