Hi Arlo, OK, I am a scientist, and I can tell you that my colleagues and I accept a lot on faith. It would be too difficult not to. Yes, we pick things up in the middle, and explain a small section of the puzzle to our satisfaction. But if we are talking philosophically, we start with faith, because we make so many assumptions to begin with. We do not have to prove that which we accept.
I still do not understand your problem with faith and theism. They are extremely high level thoughts. An animal may not be theistic, but it can reason scientifically that when the rains come, they had better get away from the river. And yes, I still do not understand the moral distinction between using plate tectonics to explain something, or a benevolent god. You still have not explained this. It is one thing to claim it is true, it is another to support your contention. So, call me stupid, explain it to me in moral terms. Otherwise I have to assume that you have no idea. Mark On Jan 18, 2010, at 7:41:11 AM, "Arlo Bensinger" <[email protected]> wrote: [Arlo] See, this is IMO a quite horrible use of the word "faith". It reduces "intellectual patterns" to just another "theism", which is precisely what Mark is arguing. Is there an essential incompleteness in all intellectual systems? Yes. But this does not translate into saying "science is just as faith-based as theism". Indeed, saying as much simply reduces ALL socio-intellectual patterns to competing theisms and dogmas. Hardly, I would argue, what Pirsig had in mind. Indeed, such abysmal thinking is what has Mark unable to see the moral distinction between understanding the Haitian earthquake as the result of geological forces and plate tectonics and proclaiming it to be the result of an angry god punishing infidels for voodoo workship. You used a word the other day that, I think, captures part of this and that is "contingence". Scientists do not operate on "faith", they operate on "contingence". They accept a premise conditionally to validate it in congruence with experience, and even the most proven, tested, repeated seemingly "undeniable" scientific "truths" are being constantly overturned. If you, or anyone, disagrees with a scientific conclusion (as Mary says) you are free to go out and find a "better" explanation. And while science may appear to move sluggish at times (rightfully so), the "best" explanations trickle upwards (even "eventually"). 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/
