From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 12:14:56 BST
Hi Rick and all,
Back to this one:
> RICK
> In light of these two comments, the question arises whether objective
> reason needs to be a "neutral ground" in order to be "a cognitively
superior
> viewpoint". I don't believe it does. That is, I do think that knowledge
> rooted in objectivity is superior to (ie. better than) knowledge rooted in
> faith, though I don't believe objectivity to be a truly 'neutral'
viewpoint
> (as I understand your use of the term). It isn't a neutral source of
truth,
> it's just a better source of truth.
> The results that have been produced by 'objectivity' I think are just
> too stupendous to be ignored. No religion that I know of can lay claim to
> anything even approaching the phenomenal power of the descriptions of
> reality produced by science. There isn't even a close contender. More to
> the point, there isn't even a *closest* contender, as no religion really
> seems any closer to the explanatory power of reason and objectivity than
any
> other.
I don't see the fruits of science as necessarily separate to a religious
perspective. To say that it is requires putting a religious perspective into
a static box, which does violence to the nature of the religion itself. If
science is allowed to change over time as our understandings evolve, why
can't religions? (The things which a particular religion has to hold to, in
order to maintain recognisable continuity of identity, we can debate about).
> Moreover, If we take 'truth' to mean things like logical consistency,
> agreement with experience and economy of explanation than I think the
> objective viewpoint is a perfectly valid ground to stand upon if one
wishes
> to assess the 'truth' of the claims of different religious beliefs.
Fine, so far as it goes.
> To borrow a phrase from one of favorite professional magicians, Mr.
Penn
> Gillette (of Penn & Teller), "God lives in the margins of science, that's
> why the believers like to keep those margins wide and blurry." Granted,
> Gillette is no theologian, but he is an expert on the ways in which people
> are fooled and fool themselves. You say that the philosophical tradition
is
> just another religion. But when you say that, it sounds to me like you're
> trying to blur the distinctions between knowledge derived from reason
> and knowledge derived from faith.
I don't believe in a 'god of the gaps' - in fact, that's rejected by most
theologians as a confused reaction to Modernism.
> I think Scott R. was doing the same thing when he wrote: "The we
should
> say that Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are theologians, since they
> assume materialism, and then try to make sense of the world, just as a
> Christian theologian assumes that God exists and that Jesus revealed God,
> and then try to make sense of the world." The analogy is false. Dawkins
> doesn't "assume" materialism the same way a Christian assumes god exists.
Whereas I think that is exactly what he does. I'm in total agreement with
Scott on this, but that can be pursed by him.
> You object to the notion that "there is 'neutral ground' from which it
> is possible to impartially assess the truth claims of different religious
> beliefs (ie 'objectively')." But do you really think some sort of
> 'neutrality' is necessary to refute the proposition that a man can be
> resurrected and that therefore if one is to believe that Christ came back
> from the dead it must be believed *entirely on faith* and in the face of
the
> mountains of evidence to the contrary?
What are the 'mountains of evidence to the contrary'? Just that nobody else
has? Yet Christians would say that 'nobody else was the Son of God' - so why
shouldn't Jesus be different?
> You can just say all Christian
> thought is metaphorical (as you seem to be doing), but then you need to
> explain why the Bible doesn't belong in the fiction section with all the
> other nice metaphors.
What do you make of this quotation, from Alan Watts, which DMB provided
(I'll make my own reactions to him):
There is no more telling symptom of the confusion of 'modern thought' than
the very suggestion that poetry or mythology can be 'mere'. This arises from
the notion that poetry and myth belong to the realm of fancy as distinct
from fact, and that since fact equal Truth, myth and poetry have no SERIOUS
content. Yet this is a mistake for which no one is more responsible than the
theeologians, who, as we have seen, resolutely confounded scientific fact
with truth and reality. Having degraded God to a mere 'thing', they should
not be surprized when scientists doubt the veracity of this 'thing' - for
the significant reason thatit seems an unnecessary and meaningless
hypothesis. Certainly the poets and myth-makers have little to tell us about
facts, for they make no hypotheses. Yet for this very reason they alone have
something really important to say; they alone have news of the living world,
of reality. By contrast, the historians, the chroniclers, and the analysts
of fact record only the news of death.
> RICK
> The MoQ, as I understand it, rejects the notion of Subject/Object thought
> being transformed into a complete metaphysics. That is, it objects to the
> view that nothing exists except subjects and objects (since such a view
> leaves out DQ entirely and blurs the lines between the 4 levels). The MoQ
> has no objection to using the subject/object dichotomy as a tool for
> understanding, so long as it is acknowledged to be just one high-quality
> intellectual pattern. The mistaken value-assumptions of SOM are avoided
(or
> at least minimized) by the increased clarity provided by the 4 levels and
> the acknowledgment of Dynamic Quality as an influence.
Agreed.
Hope you're still having fun....
Sam
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