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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion (reposting)
Message-ID: <800@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Jul-85 22:18:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.800
Posted: Wed Jul 10 22:18:05 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 09:15:56 EDT
References: <1182@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 42
Summary: Oh, God, not again!

In article <1182@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:

>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?

I am not going to step into this firefight again, but I would like to make a
couple of observations:

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

(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.

(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.

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe

   "What about all that talk about changing future events, the space-time
    continuum?"

   "Well, I figured, what the hell."