steve (04/29/83)
This article was posted to the net on April 20, but I don't think it made it out, since we have been having communications problems here at Tektronix. If you have seen it before, please forgive me... Some time back I posted an article to the net about "pantheism and the definition of good" in which I contended among other things that Christians get their definition of "good" by studying the Bible - but that such study is extremely subjective. Each person actually makes up their own mind about what is "good", hence there is no single definition of "good" that can be derived from Christianity. Steve Hutchison (dadla-b!hutch), a very intelligent and well-read person who strongly disagrees with me on the subject of religion, works in the same area as I do. He and I had several long discussions about the whole subject. His contention is as follows: The study of the Bible is error-prone; but Christians gain their definition of good from direct contact with God via prayer. Thus all of them have the same definition of "good" and my argument was flawed. My response was: "That is something we can test empirically." Hence the following experiment. I have made up a questionaire with 16 moral problems on it. People who wish to be part of the experiment should send me mail, and I will mail them a copy of the questions. If Hutch is right, all of the Christians should answer the questionaire similarly. If I am right we will get a large divergence of opinion. Respondents need not be "born again", nor indeed even Christian - after all, we need a control group as well. (The control group will be used to show that the questions do not have obvious answers. If all the controls agree on a question, then the question is probably worthless for our purposes.) The questions are not based on religion - they are situations in everyday life which apply to everyone. If you would like to help in a unique experiment to test empirically a metaphysical question, please send mail to me at: UUCP: ...!XXX!teklabs!tekmdp!dadla!dadla-a!steve (where XXX is one of: aat cbosg chico decvax harpo ihnss lbl-unix ogcvax pur-ee reed ssc-vax ucbvax zehntel) CSNET: dadla-a!steve @ tektronix ARPA: dadla-a!steve.tektronix @ rand-relay Thankyou.. Steve Den Beste Tektronix Logic Analyzers [with Steve Hutchison as an unindicted co-conspirator]