----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 12:13 PM Subject: Re: Bill Moyers: There is no tomorrow
> On Feb 5, 2005, at 10:45 AM, Dan Minette wrote: > > > So, this tendency to hold onto "known truths" no matter how they are > > called > > into question by evidence is seen in many forms, not just religious or > > political. There are many times when the first criterion for accepting > > evidence is whether or not it supports what one "already knows." > > I don't think anyone would disagree. However, it is religion which is > most often the holder of those revealed truths (hence the term). There are a couple of responses to this. First, the truths do not have to be revealed. Marxists would be agast at the very notion of revealed truths. Rather, the truths supposedly came from a scientific study of history. Marx, remember, was the first sociologist. Unless you count Adam Smith as a social scientist, he was also the first social scientist. I think a better description would be appeal to authority. One very interesting facit of this is that an appeal to a written or traditional authority need not take into account what the point of the written or traditional authority actually was. Rather, knowing the right answer, one goes through the work and finds those areas were agreement is found. I'll give two examples of this from Christianity. During the first 1500 years of Western Christianity, there were two great authorities that were recognized: Augusitine and Acquinis. The Catholic Chuch, in particular, was very dependent on the theology of Acquinis. Acquinis adressed the question of natural philosophy reason and scripture. He stated that scripture was not intended to reveal to us those truths we could obtain from reason and observation....rather it was to reveal to us those (spiritual) truths that we could not know apart from revelation. This was a strong statement in support of exploration and reason, and he got in a bit of trouble with some authorities at the time. But, by the 1500s, he _was_ the greatest authority in Catholic Church history. Pope Gregory, in accordance with this, was perfectly willing to consult Copernican astronomers when he reworked the calander. Yet, by the time of Galileo's trial, Acquinis was conveniently ignored, the precident of Pope Gregory was ignored, and inconsistancy with scripture was cited as Galileo's problem. In reality, that was just a convenient excuse. The people at the time had to ignore the Church's established precidents for understanding scripture in order to get Galileo for contridicting Aristotle. Since they knew that contradicting Aristotle wouldn't sound like a good reason for punishment, they chose an interpretation of scripture that contradited the rules set forth by their greatest theological authority and got the answer they wanted. Second case is modern funamentalism and literalism. In theory, it is an attempt to get back to the faith of the early church...the faith of the apostles. If it were really that, then every scholarly technique would be used to best determine what the actual viewpoint of the early church was. For example, the understanding of the Gospel of John held by the first person who was inspired to argue for the inclusion of this gospel into the cannon should be very important. Instead it is ignored, because it is at odds with their own views, for it calls John spiritually true, but not literally true. It's easy to see this type of behavior in others, particularly those one has very strong disagreements with. My point is that it is not helpful for non-religeous people to simply point to "those stupid religeous people over there" and conclude that religion is the problem. Rather, since this problem can be seen to manifest itself in many forms, one can look at the root of the tendency to search for solutions. As one of the most influencial pop music writers of the 20th century, Dr. Winston O'Boogy, once said. "It's easy to say 'Hah, you and your hypocracy'....what's harder to say is 'Hmm, me and my hypocracy.' We all fall prey to this problem, > I'm still inclined to think this whole tendency to cling to ideas over > reality is *partly* because we (species) are evolved to see the world > as a polar place. It would have been a very effective preconscious > survival strategy and is so deeply wired into us that intelligence has > to work *hard* to override it. Well, it can be easier to think in black and white terms, but I don't think that's the only manifestation of the problem. There is the PoMo cop out too, all that exists are narratives, and the differences between one narrative and another is simply political. In it's own way, that's just as simple minded a world view as a black and white worldview. > It's easy to get people thinking in polar terms because of the > predisposition to do so; and because it just takes less *effort* to > think in Boolean terms; and because if you (example) try to understand > why your enemy is your enemy, you start seeing some of your face in his > (or at least understanding why he's your enemy), and that makes some > people uncomfortable as hell. Sure, that's a trap. The question is how to fight the trap? One way is to think about the similarities between you and the people who make you mad as hell. Another way is to cultivate friends who have different viewpoints on those topics that reasonable people differ on. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
