Last Thursdayism
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Revision as of 07:57, 26 February 2011
Last Thursdayism (sometimes Last Tuesdayism or Last Wednesdayism) refers to the idea that the universe may have been created last Thursday, or on another day or six thousand years ago, with the appearance of being billions of years old. It is a version of the omphalos hypothesis, and of Bertrand Russell's five minute hypothesis. It suggests that the world was created last Thursday, but with the appearance of age: people's memories, history books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and so forth.
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Proving Last Thursdayism
There is no logical way to demonstrate "Last Thursdayism" is false. Equally there is no logical way to demonstrate that a (non-interventionist) god does not exist, or that we are not part of a complex computer simulation. In all cases we must ask what evidence exists to show that these suppositions may be true. If there is none then we are justified in ignoring them. To quote Christopher Hitchens, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" – or, to quote Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". As such Last Thursdayism remains as nothing more than an entertaining metaphyiscal hypothesis, albeit one that can aptly highlight the absurdity of some literal Young Earth beliefs.
The following quote from Fundies Say the Darndest Things explains why people find the idea difficult to comprehend.
“”Last Thursdayism is false because I clearly remember events from before Last Thursday. It does not follow that God could have fixed our minds and experiences to make us think we only felt things before last Thursday. For example I have a note with the date on it, "Wednesday, July 15, 2009." This would not be possible if the world was created on "Thursday July 16, 2009."[1]
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Recent manifestation
A recent manifestation of Last Thursdayism appeared on the USENET group talk.origins in 1991, as a hyperbolic response to omphalism. It gradually gained popularity, and on August 25, 1996 the FAQ [2] for the Church (its Catechism) was posted to talk.origins by Michael Keane. It is similar to Unicornism or Pastafarianism, and claims that the universe was created Last Thursday by "Queen Maeve the Housecat", who on Next Thursday (Judgement Day) will admit those who were nice to cats to Paradise and damn the unkind, the uncaring, and Creationists to the never-cleaned Eternal Litterbox. Since then the website for Last Thursdayism has become defunct.
A new incarnation has popped up that is similar to solipsism.[3]
Other possible days of creation
It should be noted that in some circles, especially talk.origins, Last Tuesdayism is taken as a schism of Last Thursdayism and is founded on the belief that the world was created last Tuesday but that unlike last Thursdayism, this happens every Tuesday.
See also
External links
- Mirror of the defunct The Church Of Last Thursdayism's webpage (stored at www.archive.org)
- Archived Usenet Post containing the FAQ of the Church of Last Thursdayism (stored by Google.com)
Footnotes
- ↑ Freethought and Rationalism discussion board - post 6021616
- ↑ Church of Last Thursday FAQ author=Micheal Keane date=1996-08-25 newsgroup=talk.origins http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/9263b3be16d586f3 accessdate= 2007-10-08
- ↑ http://www.last-thursday.org/