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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion (reposting)
Message-ID: <1202@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 10:40:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1202
Posted: Fri Jul 12 10:40:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 13:24:13 EDT
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Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
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>>Now hold on!  The "lower" view is only "lower" when held up in comparison to
>>that "higher" view.  And what is that higher view?  Why, it's called
>>"anthropocentrism", that old standby of those who proclaim humanity as the
>>center of the universe, because they'd like to think of them (i.e.,
>>themselves) that way.  (Motivations for that I'll leave to the psychological
>>minded among us.)  In other words, wishful thinking.  The so-called lower
>>view is only "low" with respect to this wishful thinking "higher" view. 
>>"Nothing more than" what makes up the rest of the universe.  This "higher"
>>view is held by people for whom that view is "not enough" for their tastes. 
>>Is there any reason to hold such a view other than anthropocentrism?  Is
>>there any evidence to support it? [ROSEN]

> (1) These aren't the only two possibilities; there's a whole scale from on
> to the other. [WINGATE]

Let's get clear on this.  What I was referring to as the "lower" view is
simply the view of human beings as they are, biological organisms, animals
as it were, with the basis of their existence in a physical world, with no
pretty flourishes about special status or specially designated purpose assigned
by an external, just what *is*.  That view is certainly lower than "higher"
views, but what is the basis for those higher views?  Evidence pointing to
the existence of things like "souls", or a special status for human beings
as being unassociated with the rest of the "animal kingdom"?  Or wishful
thinking that there are such things in the absence of evidence (and in the
presence of counter-evidence)?  Sure there's a whole scale!  But ANYTHING
on that scale that adds wishful thinking notions to reality, no matter how
much so, is STILL wishful thinking, and not grounded in reality!

> (2) Rich's anthropocentricism argument doesn't make much sense.  Nobody said
> anything about man being the center of the universe.  It's pretty hard to
> characterize Don's description of the nature of man as anthropocentric in
> the face of persistent speculation about what relationships hold between
> whatever extraterrestrial peoples there may be and YHWH.

See above comments about special status.  Lo, the Bible is certainly well
filled with them.  This sudden acceptance of the possibility of extra-
terrestrials is a modification to the literal "truth" of the Bible, is it not?

> (3) Both sides seem to think that psychology and Christianity are
> irreconcilable.  This just isn't true (read any book by M. Scott Peck if you
> think otherwise).
> 
> (4) Nor should one take behaviorism as the epitome of current psychological
> thought.  People seem to reconciled to the fact that people act on the basis
> of mental states, as well as a result of stimulae.

Modern behaviorism (as I understand it) is nothing like simple stimulus
response stuff.  As the long running conversation with Torek has mentioned,
one of the main differences between human beings and so-called "lower"
animals is our innate ability to go beyond stimulus-response, to draw on
a catalogue of stored experience as part of our basis for decision making,
though not necessarily in any more of a truly "voluntary" way than Pavlov's
dog, simply more elaborate in internal structure and implication (and,
from our standpoint, "unpredictability", although what it really is is just
too complex for us to untangle and decipher what with all the chains of
implications and "mental states".)
-- 
Like aversion (HEY!), shocked for the very first time...
			Rich Rosen   ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr