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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion
Subject: Re: This is Religion
Message-ID: <459@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 17:46:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.459
Posted: Fri Aug  9 17:46:52 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 07:27:26 EDT
References: <258@frog.UUCP> <457@spar.UUCP> <458@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 82
Keywords: Verifiable Objective Evidence
Xref: linus net.philosophy:1979 net.religion:6950

> Rich Rosen  >> Not Rich Rosen

    This Scientific Materialism is scrubbing `my mind' clean of dat ole
    debbil, Free Will. I do not seem to be able to revert to my normal
    metaphysical ways!

    Help! Help!

>>     I suppose someday we'll know more about these fuzzy concepts. For now,
>>     all we can do is grope about under the foggy subjective light of
>>     introspection.
>      
>Given how inaccurate the light has been at casting real illumination on
>reality, it's best not taken literally.

    Yes, we should ignore the vile subjective manure that often flows
    incessantly from `our minds'.

    The only truth is hard Scientific Evidence.

>>    Hopeful causality smashers? Sorry to disturb your slumber, but causality
>>    is limping badly this century:
>> 	Is it possible to provide causal explanations of QM phenomena?  I do
>> 	not know. Van Fraassen argues cogently, on the basis of Bell's
>> 	inequality and relevant experimental results, that "there are well
>> 	attested phenomena which cannot be embedded in any common-cause
>> 	model" (1982). It appears that causal explanations are possible only
>> 	if the concept of causality is fundamentally revised.
>
>This still sounds a good deal like anthropocentrism to me.  Because WE can't
>attribute a cause to something, it's "acausal".

    Idle metaphysical nonsense! The hard Scientific Evidence indicates
    a universe of acausality tempered by causality, at all levels.
  
    Incidentally, Science itself is an anthropocentrism. It was created by
    humans to overcome heinous subjective devils like religion. 

    As a vocal spokesperson for verifiable Evidence, you must examine the
    hard Scientific Evidence closely!

    Your naive heresy is forgivable but, outside our pristine Digital Garden
    of Eden, the Evidence indicates that heinous spontaneity infests
    everything. Beware of the temptation of obsolete heretical fallacies.

    The traditional Doctrine of Causality, which until ~1900, asserted
    a priori that:
   
    1. All phenomena are caused by something.
    2. All phenomena which are repeatably and demonstrably connected must
       have some causal explanation.
    
    ...has been crucified by randomness and nonlocal interactions.
    
    The Evidence indicates that:
    
    1. Effects do repeatably and reliably recur without discernable causes.
    2. Totally regular correlations in the Evidence are undeniably present
       that, under rigorous analysis, have been found to be unattributable
       to traditional causal connections.

    By Occam's razor, we must abandon the the traditional Doctrine of
    Causality.

    Or would you deny the Evidence and cling to defunct and heretical
    a priori notions?
    
    Rich, are you a - a wishful metaphysicist??

        O Nihil, God of Scientific Materialism
        Who art not, as I am not,
	Lead Rich Rosen away 
	from his spontaneous subjective fantasies
	and back onto the righteous path
	of rigorous Objective thought 
        and verifiable Evidence
	and deliver him into the Garden
	of Sweet Digital Causality.

    SMASH SPONTANEITY!!!

-michael