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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion (reposting)
Message-ID: <1224@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Jul-85 08:09:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1224
Posted: Tue Jul 16 08:09:34 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jul-85 04:52:40 EDT
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>>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!

> I really don't want to get deep into this argument.  Rich has already stated
> that no one can produce convincing evidence to him.  I will point out,t
> however, that his argument of wishful thinking is wishful thinking, see as
> how it cannot be proven or disproven.

To whom have you produced convincing evidence of your argument?  Yourself?
The reason no one can produce convincing evidence to support YOUR argument
might very well be that there IS none, in a real objective sense.

>>>(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?

> Dammit, Rich, read the thing!  And you could also listen to what I say, once
> in a while.  First off, I don't believe in Biblical literal truth, or even
> in anything but the very weakest possible form of inerrancy.  Be that as it
> may, I see nothing in the Bible that says that whatever extraterrestrial
> races exist are "just animals", or anything else, for that matter.  The
> question simply isn't discussed.  And I would submit to you that being the
> only known race of anything in need of redemption is hardly a distinction to
> be proud of.  It seems to me that you are overly anxious to erase any notion
> that humanity has any special problems that (say) rabbits don't.

Only known race?  That's rather anthropocentric in and of itself!  Known by
whom?  By us, who don't know all that much about the rest of the universe
yet who (at least some of whom) claim to believe in a book that states that
a deity created US and OUR PLANET first and foremost?  Only some of us
"need" redemption, the way some of us need parental caretaking and similar
things all our lives.  What are these "special problems", and what are their
roots?

>>>(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".)

> But that isn't where the distinction between mentalism and behaviorism lies.
> You can have mentalist AND deterministic theories at the same time.  The key
> thing about bevaviorisn is that it says that you can ignore the mental
> states.  Given our current level of understanding, I'd have to say that this
> is unproven.  

I say again.  The mental states are achieved through the same process that
behaviorists talk about, even in that dreaded behaviorist model.  I doubt
that many behaviorists are so pure that they deny the existence of "mental
states".  That's one fo the big differecnes that came out of the conversation
I mentioned above:  humans store knowledge constructs (mental states?) better
than "lower" animals.  You weren't listening.
-- 
Life is complex.  It has real and imaginary parts.
					Rich Rosen  ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr