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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (96394)	4/26/2003 10:17:01 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

OT Continued [data analysis and creationism] You can never have all the variables at hand. Nor are the choice of your variables objective. There is a lot of truth to the saying, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Give the same problem to different engineers, sociologists, cosmologists, etc and most likely they will have different set of variables. I once heard a story that illustrates this. Tere was a luxury building in which the elevators took just long enough to be annoying. The civil engineers wanted to tear down one unit on each floor to add elevators, but the winning solution was from a student who installed mirrors on every floor, thereby keeping people too busy to be annoyed with the delay. > For that, there are ways (purely mathematical ways), to decide if you have a large enough sample, to get results that answer the question. Sometimes yes, but often no. Nontrivial solutions are always solved with a dash of luck and/or faith. > But you are using an Enlightenment yardstick to measure. Not fair. Not so. At least as far back as Plato, some people have believed that pure reasoning is superior to other discovery methods. The problem with believing creationism is that it boils down to "I believe in Bible because Christ said so, and I believe in Christ because Bible says so". It assumes the solution. For a solution to be acceptable, you have to show that it can refute other solutions (or at least is better than them). People used logic long before Bible. > calling it debate (just like NeoCons and pacifists). Poor example, imo. If 10 years from now I look back and see the neocon solution worked, I will be making major changes to my beliefs. But it takes at least that long to see it through. I can't think of any time frame that could prove creationism. > The Gaians solve this problem, by saying that the natural world, in all its immense complexity, is God. Indeed. And there are plenty of merits to their arguments which I find persuasive. BTW, Gaians are hardly alone in this. Muslim Sufis also have similar beliefs. Hindus believe the universe is the dreams of a sleeping god. And looking at Buddhism from a certain angle can also lead to the same conclusion. For all that matters, George Lucas said as much in Star Wars. All in all, I find this perspective more acceptable than that the 3 "great" religions. ST