-----Original Message----- From: Arlo Bensinger [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 2:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] Metaphysics
[Krimel] They accept on faith that their cars and TV and computers work for reasons. For those people, the majority in fact appealing to science as a "reason" is not much different from claiming God made it happen. [Arlo] But I do think there is a good deal of difference between saying "my Harley runs on an internal combustion engine, and I don't understand it, but I accept it" and saying "my Harley runs because angels push my bike". A primary difference is that should the engine stop working, and I became sufficiently motivated to do so, the theories of internal combustion (and mechanics, etc.) will allow me to get the machine working again. No amount of "praying to God" will fix a broken engine. [Krimel] No wonder you take such issue with Platt. All those dead angels could negatively impact your next road trip. [Arlo] Again, as I said to Ian earlier, there is a profound difference between accepting a provisional premise that is always checked against experience and accepting an absolute statement despite it being checked against experience. [Krimel] We went over all this about two years ago and I tend to side more with Ian. I do think faith is involved when we face the unknown. To me the question is how much. Angels pushing your bike requires a leap of faith, inventors tinkering with the laws of nature just a little faith. Having said that, I do find it distressing when Mark and Platt and to a certain extent Marsha use this distinction of degree to claim no difference at all. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
