Subject:
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Re: Science is not a religion, and religion is not a science.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Jan 2001 15:02:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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1265 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
> > and in any case our "definition of reality" is subordinate
> > to reality itself (I recognize that quantum theory identifies the perception
> > of an event as integral to the event, but in the macroscopic world things
> > are somewhat different). If a caveman didn't "believe" in the handgun I
> > killed him with, he'd still be dead. The bubonic plague victim of the 14th
> > century died of the plague, even if he "believed" it to be the work of the
> > Devil. You're brushing up against the Postmodernist notion that a thing
> > cannot exist unless that thing is named/described/identified by the cultural
> > consciousness. If one accepts this notion (which I do not), then one can
> > claim with impunity pretty much anything about anything.
>
> Most certainly. BUT, let's look more closely. If the caveman didn't believe
> in the handgun, does he experience that handgun, or does he experience the
> getting shot? Or does he only experience the death? If the caveman CAN'T
> experience such an event, what good will come of his theorizations about
> such? There may be some interdimentional being about to shoot your head off
> with an interdimentional ray gun, but does it actually EXIST, for YOU? Would
> it do you ANY good to theorize about that?
This, too, is Postmodernism, and it depends on a solipsistic "me first"
sort of reality. Certainly the caveman is dead, and that should be enough
for him, but the agent of his death is separate from his perception of it.
It is a handgun (or interdimensional ray gun) whether he believes in,
perceives it, understands it, or not. His failure to include it in his
reality is, in fact, irrelevant.
> > My belief, for what it's worth, is that "reality" exists. This is faith
> > of a sort, I admit, but it's a much smaller leap of faith than, say,
> > believing in a belevolent, intelligent, infinite being who rules over the
> > endless universe he created.
>
> And thus I would point out that you can only say with certainty that your
> leap of faith is only smaller for you. What we REALLY should be arguing here
> is whether that leap of faith is smaller for EVERYONE (all humans, that is).
It is a smaller leap of faith in a literal, arithmetic way. I do not
accept that anyone in history--other than certain advanced drug users or
people with extreme neurological disfunction--has ever had a consistent
metaphysical experience of equal clarity and tangibility as day-to-day
mundane experience. And in any case you're sort of suggesting that God's
existence is relativist and depends upon the perceptions of His faithful.
Alternatively, as I suspect you're really positing (hypothetically perhaps),
God exists whether or not anyone believes in Him. The latter suggestion is
no doubt more palatable to the faithful among us, but that doesn't make it
true, either.
> Ah, and here comes that exact arguement-- that for humans, faith in the
> physical is ALWAYS more prevalent than the metaphsysical. And I'd agree,
> actually. However, again, I feel it an important distinction to say that
> such is only true for humans, and that I concede that I may in fact be wrong.
I hesitate to call it wrong, though I might call it incomplete. If
jellyfish from Orion experience metaphysical reality more concretely than
physical reality, good for them. Humans, with our brains as they are, will
have no access to those experiences, nor any way to verify them logically.
The acceptance of another's unsupportable (to humans) testimony is the same
type of faith as accepting one's own non-reproducible, inarticulable experience.
Dave!
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