hua@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Ernest Hua) (05/10/85)
______________________________________________________________________ > From: arndt@lymph.DEC > > Look Colin. Sartre has made your point as well when he said, "A > finite point is without meaning except in reference to an infin- > ite reference point." UNLESS, as you seem to understand, there > is SOMETHING to give our lives and existence meaning then let's > "eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Really? And where did he even imply that we should "eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"? "Infinite reference point" is self- contradicting. A reference point is absolute, not infinite. > It is not just ME that 'cannot get along with that idea' but the > whole, including today, of man's culture screams out for SOME- > THING to be transendent in his existence. It seems like the only people who are "screaming out" are ultra-con- servative fools like you and Falwell. I personally do not know of anyone else who is "screaming out". I don't see any reason to even look for "something to be transendent" in my existence. I don't know what YOUR problems is ... well, may be you revealed it later ... > From, burial customs, > and on and on. YOU are in the minority and some would say merely > whistling in the graveyard. Tell me that you can live with that > over your child's coffin and I might begin to believe you. Would you care to give some statistics to prove this? Or are you just screaming out rhetoric to hopefully beat Colin into submission? Aha! Does this last sentence reveal something? Are you morning over YOUR child's coffin? Seems like pretty good reason to WANT to believe in something "transcendental". Of course, reality is quite different from what you WANT it to be. > YOU claim knowledge you can't possibly have when you say 'we > don't belong to it' [the world]. Twattle. You don't KNOW that > there IS NO meaning to life outside your skin! You BELIEVE that, > on 'faith' no less, because you somehow have worked yourself into > a box with no one and nothing in there with you except 'reason' > and 'science'. Wonderful! I hope the three of you are very hap- > py. Thanks, ALL of us are quite happy without any faith in any mystical nonsense. Scientists happen to assume that something does not exist until it can be show with sufficient proof that it does exist. Gods, spirits, demons, etc. are in a class of things called supernatural because they are BY DEFINITION beyond nature, whatever that means. Since they are already defined beyond our grasps, we must simply ignore them as existent. They may exist, but who in the world thought of such a thing in the first place? Do you believe in Santa Claus? Why not? Fool! You only have some senseless sad dejected definition of Christmas ... yeah, some guy who died on two pieces of wood because he was a trouble maker ... me? well, I've got a really nice guy who comes down my chimney every Christmas and gives me wonderful presents. I have something that truly gives meaning and joy to my Christmas; you only worship some fool who died eons ago.(sarcasm to the max.) > You ask for reasons? What is the reason we MUST find a reason > WITHIN ourselves???? Yes, be self-dependent. Why depend upon something you don't understand? > It seems logically that we can't find a reason there! If you don't want to find it there, you certainly won't. I have always found some meaning somewhere in myself. I don't depend upon it for survival, however. You, on the other hand, seem to think that if you don't find some meaning anywhere, you might as well go out and kill someone because there won't be someone to spank you in another life. > (Sartre) Is 'dignity' (see below) the best you > can really come up with? Very sad. As someone said, you're > building on sinking sand. Sad? Dignity is sad? And you have something better? Blind faith in some thousand-year-old book of fairy tales? I call THAT sad. > You seem to think 'scientists' are not > men of 'faith' but deal somehow with assumptions that our science > is built upon are just that - assumptions. Damn right. Assume that nature is consistent. Do you actually think that this is inaccurate or false? > Only grad students don't realize that and claim to be working > in some kind of world where things are 'certain'. They persist > (you see them here on the net) in claiming that because, based > upon untestable assumptions, certain things follow therefore we > have 'hard' knowledge and those who choose assumptions that start > with a Personal Absolute Being as an assumption upon which to build > are somehow operating on 'faith' - yucky religious faith at that! That's right! In fact, I hope some grads read this, and pound your face in. Say, what DO you do at DEC? Take out the trash? Obviously your education stopped in kindergarden. That's when little kids still retain their wonder faith in things like the Easter Bunny. You mean you don't believe in the Easter Bunny?! What's the matter with you? (more sarcasm to the max.) > There are > any number of non-Christian scientists, many of whom I and others > have quoted here on the net, who make just this statement. Still > we get 'Duncan Donuts' with his ringing statement of 19th C. > scientific epistemology which little children faithfully copy for > school projects with their silly parents approval. Christian or non-Christian, scientists do not use faith. We don't care what other scientists do with their spare time, but they better not try to bring any of their faith into their work, or they will quickly lose their reputations and respectability. > You have a silly definition of 'superstition'. It seems to mean > anything 'science' can't measure. I take it to mean that which > has no evidence (in the FULL definition of 'evidence') to back it > up, - data OR logic. You DO see the distinction between data and > logic, don't you. You wouldn't be a 'scientist' if you didn't. > Data is what we believe exists, by FAITH, and exercise logic > upon. At bottem we're ALL prayin' to SOME God! Baloney. You and other creationists use this "you do it too, so there" argument to justify your childish behavior. Problem is, we DON'T. We are tired of you try to convince us that we actually pray to some god of science somewhere in Neverneverland. Data either exists or it does not. We do not have FAITH that it is there. ... Forget it, Ken. I am sick of answering your nonscientific gripes and emotional outbursts. Your religion is overwhelming, but your science is nonexistent. Move your discussion to net.religion. Read the rest of your silly post. This is religious to the max. Get it off net.origins! > DIGNITY! You shall have none! I beleive what you seem to be > saying about dignity is mere posturing. Like a frog pretending > to be a Prince. Where is the dignity in death? You see it? > Growing old and failing in body and mind. Better a quick out on > your feet, eh? Even if for no reason. Just raise your head and > scream at the empty heavens and shake your fist and pull the > trigger. Best example of this I ever saw was Slim Pickin's ride > down on the atomic bomb. THAT'S the way to go! Whip a cosmic > bird at the empty cosmos and check yourself out! BUT DIGNITY! > Surely you are fooling yourself. Dignity, it seems to me, stems > not from an illusion of worth and meaning, but from the real > thing. God understanding? What God? What if he provided a mes- > sage that recounts the WHYS of our condition and the HOW TO get > out of it (death) and you ignore it? Expect him to be very > tolerant still? > > It's a cop out -unless it's true- which I say it is, and you deny > I believe, because you fail to recognize evidence to the contrary > or understand the process by which we DO find and examine evi- > dence. > > Say, WHERE, did 'spirit' come from? Loose lips sink ships! What > DO you mean when you use the word spirit? Thoughts, electrons, > chemicals, something non-physical - surely not. 'To say they ex- > ist (which we are doing here -others don't) and the best we can > do is postpone them' is claiming too much! How do YOU know all > we can do is go with the flow? I grant you that, locked in your > little mental materialistic box, there's not much you can do. > But you don't HAVE to give up reason to step out of the box. > That's the stupidity of our times. And your position. > > Bosh! Who's whining? You sound like a little kid who won't get > off the dime and DO something about his problems. I'll post some > REASONS, should I say more reasons (from others and myself), why > one can be a 'reasonable' man and still see further than the end > of one's slide rule. IT'S UNREASONABLE NOT TO SEE THE LIMITS OF > REASON OR TO CONSIDER REASON TO BE MORE THAN A METHOD WITH WHICH > TO 'OBSERVE' THE WORLD. Are you a grad student? That would ex- > plain much of your understanding. A little humor there, Colin. > Remember I still love you. > > I can hardly hear you. From inside your mental materialistic > box. You remember the reason Evolution MUST be true, don't you? > Because if you go back and back one individual at a time you get > to the next grouping (animals to fish, fish to plants, etc) and > so there MUST BE SOME WAY for it to have happened on the basis of > the 'why', your terms 'wishful thinking' (it ain't 'facts' ma- > dame) called EVOLUTION. Gee, you mean we don't start 'science' > with 'science'???? No Wally, we don't! We start with a point of > view and see what 'fits'. Fits observation and logic. IT'S NOT > LOGICAL TO TAKE A POSITION THAT CAN'T BE TESTED - you know, one > like Evolution where EVERYTHING fits because it's so open-ended > you just make more room for the new data. WHAT WOULD SHOW THAT > EVOLUTION WAS FALSE? Perhaps an interesting question? > > We 'need' an outside source because there there appears to be no > 'inside' source of meaning and it sure looks like there SHOULD be > meaning to it all SOMEWHERE! Is it wishful thinking to seek > another particle a theory tells us should be there? Is it wish- > ful thinking to seek something we have 'reason' to believe should > exist? > > I'm have no intention of saying any such thing. Only statements > about weights of evidence. Which really 'fits' the world. And > by now you realize that when I say 'world' I don't mean just that > which hangs on the end of my slide rule. But 'assumptions' that > fit reason and logic and the way I think and the way I think I > observe the world. What I would call the 'backbone' of science. > > You don't know what you are talking about, guy. There is to be a > 'new heavens and a new earth' where all the old things are no > more - no more tears, death, etc. Where did you get the idea > that there will be no physical world in the Christian world-to- > come? It's this current evil, broken world that will pass away. > And by the way, if you read the Bible you find out that it is > nothing for Christians to look forward to from the point of view > of those who are going to live through it. Great suffering. I > think many Christians who DO look forward to the 'end times' > don't have this in mind the way it should be. > > Come on Colin, take a little 'kindergarten name-calling'. It > might loosen you up. It's allowed on the 'debate floor'. > > As if it's naughty to think about these things. Really Colin. > Big bad Creationist. Claims there is a reason to have hope. > When we just KNOW (learned it in school) there is no reason to > have hope. We're all each just a funny little electron matirx > with delusions of grandeur. Because Democritus says so?? ______________________________________________________________________ Please die. Don't prosper. You don't deserve it. Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }