rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (11/28/84)
Once again, I apologize for living out in the sticks where UUCP connections are not considered a high priority (making UNIX commands unworkable and inconsistent has a higher priority here!), but I have missed most of the interim discussion on Jeff's speaking in tongues episode. Are we calling you a "liar", Jeff, as you once called me and as you claimed Kulawiec had done to you? When you make claims without proper investigation and simply take them to be fact without further examination just because of your subjective experience, and when you publicly promote them as such, "liar" may be too strong a term (remember, you chose it yourself!) but the veracity of what you are saying is questionable, at best. >>... the point to make here is, as Rich Rosen has pointed out in the past, >>people believe what they want to believe, or in this case, hear what they >>want to hear. There was a fellow who did an experiment in which low-volume >>random de garbage was played for people in a context where human speech >>was expected. One of the subjects, a native of Eastern Europe, burst into >>tears, and exclaimed that she'd never heard her mother tongue since she >>was a child. [ea!jejones] > And what does that experiment prove? Only what you want to believe. All > it says is that some random garbage can sound like some Eastern European > language if it is not heard clearly. It does not disprove Christians' > claims about speaking in tongues at all. [SARGENT] If you work from the claims being (a priori) facts as your starting point, THEN others would be obliged to "prove" or "disprove" what you've said based on the mind believing what it wants to (the experiment Laurie Sefton cited regarding the ice cube as well as the one James Jones mentioned above come to mind). But there is clearly no reason to work from there; rather it is up to the one who has made the unusual claim (i.e., you) to make sure that he has investigated these other possibilities including the ones mentioned above, before jumping to the conclusion (and proclaiming publicly) that what you've experienced fits the pattern that you have chosen to believe for it. There is only one viable reason for not doing that thorough examination: because doing so would lead YOU to a conclusion that YOU do not want to accept as a possibility! Is that indeed what you've done, Jeff? >>how do you know it was a real language if you hadn't heard it? > That's something I have to take on faith (why do so many people in this > newsgroup have such contempt for faith?). I know I'll get hell for this, but Jeff recently wrote me a letter (actually, it wasn't that recently, I only received it recently) in which he use a quote that I believe he has used before on the net describing faith. I would like to reproduce that quote here as part of my rebuttal to the above statement. (I did ask Jeff for permission to reproduce the quote in the full original context in which he included it in his letter; since I've received no reply, I won't do that, but I will reproduce the quote itself.) > Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not > see. (Hebrews 11:1-3) Jeff asks "why do so many have contempt for faith?" When I accused Jeff of basing his whole belief system on wishful thinking ("there MUST be justice in the world, therefore there is a god who is just; there MUST be a difference between humans and 'mere' animals, therefore humans have souls..."), he called me a liar. No punches pulled there. Yet this statement clearly says something about the nature of faith. "Being sure of what we hope for". Need I say more there? "Certain of what we do not see". If that's not equivalencing faith with wishful thinking and presupposition (as I've REPEATEDLY [!!!!] described in this newsgroup) then I don't know what is!!! As someone else said more succinctly and much better in this newsgroup, (I paraphrase) "Faith is not bothering to check to see if the seeds in the jam one brings to a picnic are moving before eating it. Think first, be unique." (That part I remembered exactly!) What is Jeff's faith (and the faith of other religious believers) other than such wishful thinking and presupposition as I have described? Is this a quality to be praised and rejoiced in?? -- When you're omniscient, everything's a tautology. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr