hua@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Ernest Hua) (06/07/85)
___________________________________________________________________________ This is in response to Peter Su as well as to the quoted article. I thought the said article provided an excellant framework to start from. Peter's articles suggested that there is minimal faith, though faith nevertheless. > 1. What you are REQUIRED to BELIEVE ... is what the system cannot prove. In terms of science, I must disagree with the wording. One places confidence in something when there is sufficient evidence to support it. (I don't think it is too relevant to argue over what fine dividing line constitutes "sufficient".) If you would prefer to group all of these together (con- fidence, faith, belief, ...), then there is really very little to argue over since you hold a different premise. I prefer to distinguish between at the very least between confidence and faith. Faith despicts a great separation between any supporting evidence and the actual set of ideas held. Confidence despicts a close relationship. For example, one can say that Christianity is based upon the Bible. The faith is held in God/Christ ... not that they exist (that is assumed) ... but that mankind is His creation, that mankind has suffered some kind of spiritual "fall", and that mankind will require spiritual salvation (I do not pretend to know what these things constitute). This is an assumption, and it is what you are require to believe. I do not know of any reason to make this assumption; besides, it is far too specific of an assumption with no logical validity in itself. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, also makes assumptions. Here it differs in so much as this: Instead of approaching reality by defining it (in terms of God), I prefer to begin with the very fundamentals. I know that I, myself, exist in some form. (If not, this becomes totally trivial and irrelevant.) I am not too sure of other things. I have some peripheral devices that can in- dependently confirm the existence of myself and of other things to a reason- able degree. (For example, I can see my arms and I can touch them as well.) I may build, on top of this, other knowledges. (I can see a desk in front of me. I can touch it as well.) Still, I recognize the possibility that those primary assumptions on which I build my body of knowledge may not be correct or accurate, but the fundamentals are trivial in a sense that if they are false, this attempt to build a body of knowledge becomes useless and senseless. After a lot of building, you begin to realize that you cannot gather enough knowledge by yourself to gain too much useful understandings without making grand assumptions. Afterall, the only way to gain knowledge is to observe and logically infer (not the same as guess). When another person gives me information/ideas, I have to check them against my current body of knowledge. If something does not fit correctly, I have to ask questions and at times, request the evidence that led the person to such information/ideas. This is, as you might easily guess, education. Pure science, not necessarily any brand of it--just the concept of science itself, is this. (There will be many who will argue that the history of science show otherwise. The history, however, does not necessarily reflect the method, althought, in some sense, one can say that the body of the knowledge developed and evolved, and thus has some reflects in the formal methodology (a la "ontogeny recapitulates phalogeny"). > 2. Anything that you are asked to keep secret is of more value to the > teacher than it is to the student. I am not too sure what is meant by this ... Maybe I am a bit dense ... anyone care to explain? > 3. Any practise that is forbidden offers something that the system cannot > succesfully replace with an alternative. Interesting idea. Like sex is a no-no in fundamentalist Christianity except for the proliferation of the species (oops! excuse me! I meant "kind"). > So I also feel thats it is appropriate to put out the call to folks to start > posting some positive spiritual material here in net.religion. Positive spiritual material might be great discussion topics for this group. I guess I could enjoy a different discussion flavor besides the usual flaming at Ken Arndt. The material put forth by Rich Rosen is also pretty interesting. His analysis is an excellant portrayal of an ideal scientific mind vs an in- doctrinated mind. It also brings up the whole idea of basic assumptions which I touched upon above. Unfortunately, it got too sidetracked. ___________________________________________________________________________ Live long and bring forth the positive spiritual material! Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }