Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 18:46:14 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, nate@mt.sri.com, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Newest Pentium bug (fatal) Message-ID: <199711111846.LAA26633@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199711111652.JAA16566@rocky.mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Nov 11, 97 09:52:02 am
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> [ More 'religious' discussion, delete if not interested ] Not that your or my opinions on this have much to do with FreeBSD... 8-). > > > I would be skeptical unless you could repeat your performance in a > > laboratory. > > Ok, but what if what God told me wasn't fortelling the future, but was > instead based on something that is impossible to 'measure' > scientifically. (Example, it was information on another person that > tells me something about them that I wouldn't normally be able discern > without having a conversation about that person, and that it only > happened some of the time, based on the needs of the person.) > > Not everything you believe in must be scientifically provable. Heck, > most things normal people 'believe in' are taken for granted anyway, > such as I agree to an extent. Only that which you believe in that you *also* expectect me to believe in must be scientifically provable, since unless I'm your impressionable kid (who you can program up however you want, since you're the parent), it will take provability to make me believe what you believe. > > The people who say "...and then I'd still be skeptical" > > are athiests, and have just as closed a mind as those who claim > > existance based on faith. > > Ahh, so people who have faith in something unknown or unseen have a > closed mind. Glad you think so, since faith is applicable to many > things outside of religion, and therefore if you have faith in them, you > must have a closed mind. The gist of my statement on atheism is that if you refuse to believe after offered verifiabale proof, you have a closed mind. An athiest is someone who has made a decision based on the absence of proof, rather than on proof of absence. You can't be a theist or an athiest without either having proof OR having a closed mind on the subject about which you have faith. > [ Apologies to any Indian people on the list ] > > Terry, have you ever been to India? It must not exist, since you've > never seen it, nor even been anywhere near it. See, all of the 'Indian' > people that you know are making it all up as a cruel hoax against you > and laughing behind your back, and really don't live in another country, > but instead all come from a small corner of South America. They produce > all of the pictures and materials just to complete the facade, and > they're doing a pretty good job of it. > > What, you don't believe me? It's your choice of place -- now if you'd said "Idaho is fictitious"... I figure that someone from Montanna would have to be in on it if it *were* a conspiracy. 8-) 8-). > Well, obviously you must have 'faith' that > this country exists first, or that your 'faith' in the people who have > convinced you that India exists is greater than the 'faith' you have in > me that it doesn't exist. You have 'Faith' based on someone else's > experiene that India exists, and a lack of faith in me. Actually, I've seen satellite photos. I guess you could claim that what I saw was Lilliputia or Xanth or something... 8-). But in reality, it's an issue of pragmatism -- engineering instead of physics... Occam's Razor in action. That there is an India is a simpler explanation that fits all the facts than that there is an "India conspiracy". So until you present evidence to the contrary, I won't "believe" in India, but I'll take its existance as a working hypothesis. ;-). > Belief in something outside *YOUR* experiences is faith, so basically > you have no faith in 'spiritual' people that a God or gods could exist > that directly/indirectly affect your life and existance. So, the *real* > question is what caused this lack of faith in people who claim to know > and/or hear from God? In one word: Science. There's a wonderful science fiction story along these lines, where the main character's friends father hears God, and it's a problem for the friend. So the friend takes his father, and gets his brain chemistry adjusted to "normal" (average human of the time) tolerances. The father quits hearing God, and though he was opposed to the adjustment beforehand, he thanks his child after the fact. The story ends with the main character (who has been observing all this) having the same chemical imbalance the father had suffered from electively induced to combat his own (perceived) crises of faith -- and he begins to hear God. The question this parable asks is "what ennobles a majority, so that people think 'majority equals right'?" > > If you weren't predictive, I might claim you were schitzophernic until > > you became predictive... any factually based model is predictive. > > Hearing from God != foretelling the future. But knowing there is a God as ooposed to hypothesizing that there is or isn't should be enough for you to build a better model of the universe than someone who doesn't know. Someone who doesn't know can't make any simplifying assumptions one way or the other. Better models are more predictive. So while "hearing from God != foretelling the future", knowing that there is (or isn't) a God should make you better at fortelling the future than someone who doesn't know. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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