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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion (reposting)
Message-ID: <1228@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Jul-85 00:53:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1228
Posted: Wed Jul 17 00:53:53 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jul-85 05:57:57 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*. [ROSEN]

> Rich, you seem to be making an assumption here.  You claim (I think) that
> what "is" is limited to that which can be shown to exist physically.  
> While I agree that this materialist approach is a powerful model, it is not
> the only useful model, nor is it the only model that describes "reality".
> [HUTCH]

For the n+1-th time:  1) What is "non-material"?  (we've been through this
whole mill before, and no one has yet been able to explain how "supernatural",
"non-physical", or any such word is anything but an anthropocentric label
based on what limits there are [at a given time] to human perception, or
else a synonym for "not really existing")  2) Are the religious claims about
the flourishes and status I describe above based on hard evidence about such
things, or on speculation rooted in what is wished for or expected from the
world?

>>...  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)?

> Please correct me if I misunderstand your position:
> You claim that such evidence is wishful thinking because it cannot be proven
> using methodology which is used within the materialist model.  Your claim
> seems to be that the "higher" (sorry, can't think of a better label) views
> are invalid because their evidence is somehow flawed;  circular reasoning,
> fabricated evidence, etc.  However, the materialist model makes very similar
> claims in its fundamental approach.
> For example, I could claim that the intuitive basis for accepting causality
> is wishful thinking.

Ah, but there is hard evidence of the workings of causality.  Are the higher
views based on such evidence, or on what I described above?  The point is NOT
just that the higher view cannot be proven using certain (any?) methodologies,
the point is that the ideas aren't based on evidence uncovered in the real
world but rather on speculation.  It's one thing to speculate about things
like quarks and such based on evidence for them, quite another to speculate
in a vacuum, with a basis only in what one might like to believe about the
world.

>>... 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!

> Once again, your model of reality isn't an exact map of reality, and it isn't
> going to get you anywhere to tell other people that they are engaged in
> wishful thinking when you don't share the same basic assumptions.  Hopefully
> you can point out places where SHODDY thinking is occurring, which is more
> useful and probably more productive.

It is shoddy to build notions from what one wishes for rather than what there
is evidence for.  I would have thought that was clear.  At the root, we
do share the same assumptions, but religious believers regularly choose to
just arbitrarily make exceptions to make their beliefs fit, as with the
wishful thinking notions of the existence of god in and of itself. 

>>>(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?

> Extraterrestrials aren't dealt with in the Bible at all, Rich.  You've set
> up a straw man by claiming a modification here.

Not at all.  Sargent above made the statement about current speculation about
extraterrestrials.  Clearly the story of Genesis, in which it is detailed
how god created the earth and then the other "heavenly bodies" makes the
earth (and later, humanity) the focal point of god's creation.  To suddenly
admit that the earth is just liek any other planet in the universe in terms
of origin, and not something special (thus offering the potential for other
life on those other planets) would contradict that story.

>>Like aversion (HEY!), shocked for the very first time...

> Like a purge(IN); flush()ed for the very first time...
> (I LIKE THESE SIGNOFF LINES!)

You've seen the last of them (thank Ubizmo!).
-- 
"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day
 to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human
 being can fight and never stop fighting."  - e. e. cummings
	Rich Rosen	ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr