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From: ddb@mrvax.DEC (DAVID DYER-BENNET MRO1-2/L14 DTN 231-4076)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Presumptions
Message-ID: <273@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Dec-84 22:18:18 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.273
Posted: Fri Dec 14 22:18:18 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Dec-84 08:36:44 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 52

I've seen several postings recently which, as I read them, say "You guys
haven't shown how there can be morals without God; therefore there is God."

Let's take this in two parts.  First, please IGNORE WHETHER THAT'S WHAT YOU
REALLY SAID.  That is what I understood you to say, and I want to make sure
you understand why I don't like it.

There is no logical connection apparent to me between the premise and the
conclusion.  If the above statement seems reasonable to you, you are assuming
something that I am not.  Possible candidates include "and there are morals",
or "morals can only come from God", or "morals can't exist unless we know
where they come from" or something like that.  I shouldn't pursue this any
further without some feedback to guide the direction of the discussion.

Now, the other possibility is that I didn't understand what you said
correctly.  This seems doubtful.  I've seen too many arguments of essentially
the same form -- "you rationalists can't completely explain everything,
therefore we are right."  To me, that's nonsense.  To me, any system that
claims to completely explain everything is suspect; because whenever I've
thought I completely understood something, I've later learned that there
was more to it than I had thought.  One of the problems of being a
rationalist is that we have to live with uncertainty about many things,
some of them of vital importance.   JUST BECAUSE IT ISN'T PLEASANT DOESN'T
MEAN IT'S WRONG!!!!!  To us, your apparent yearning for security, certainty,
and stability is simply at odds with the way the universe really is.
This is the main "presumption" I see you making.  It flavors all of your
arguments, is an unspoken premise behind everything you say.

Again I ask you to set aside for the moment whether my conclusions about
you are in fact correct, and discuss their consequences.  Do any of you
out there deny that there is a stupendous quantity of evidence that humans
are easily led, easily fooled; that they can convince themselves of the
most ridiculous things, if they want to?  That human psychology isn't very
well understood, but that our capacity for creating and inhabiting dream
worlds of greater or lesser extent is unbounded?  I SAY THAT EACH OF US
MUST APPLY THIS TO HIMSELF, AS WELL AS TO OTHERS.  Of course it's
inconvenient for my arguments that I've just called all human thought into
question.  So what?  I refuse to sweep it under the rug just because
it's inconvenient.  The universe is rarely as we would have it, but must
be dealt with on its own terms.

Please, let's try to deal with these difficult issues as difficult issues,
rather than sweeping them under the rug.  In particular, Paul Dubuc, the
last long article of yours that I read had a disgusting selection of

shallow, facile, arguments playing with the surface of some serious
discussion of these real issues.  Ken Arndt has shown that he is more
widely read than I am; I look forward to a response, to see if he can
contribute something to my understanding.

		-- David Dyer-Bennet
		-- ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-mrvax!ddb