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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (77923)	10/21/2003 6:01:45 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

"Sure, if we are prepared to reject as "merely subjective" all value judgments, all intimations of a deep structure to the universe which amounts to an overall purposive plan, and any sense that we have that individual human life matters in the long run, then we may as well throw the idea of God in the waste bin" Tautological. All you have said is that if you reject faith in an Absolute Being or Force, then you reject the idea of God. This, of course, is the scientific method which is what Dawkins was trying to convey. To accept as factual without evidence is the path of deluded and dangerous men. This does not mean that one cannot honestly look for design and purpose through the eyes of science and reason. It simply means that one does not begin the search for Truth with a certainty of conclusion, and then proceed to supply the "evidence" with imagination and myth. As to the value of philosophy, literature, poetry, etc...you will get no argument from me. But the "truths" they seek and reveal are different than the truths sought by pure science. To be human is to be both rational and irrational, both happy and sad, both "certain" and full of doubt. John Burroughs said there was a knowledge which the heart gathered and one which the head gathered. Science, however, cannot be effective or reliable if it contaminates itself with the humanities. It does not mean, though, that science and humanism are hostile to one another. Perhaps an illustration would assist. Jesus told the disciples that they could endure poisonous snake bites without harm and that they and their successors should do this to persuade non-believers. Over the centuries, many deluded people did this very thing--and lost their lives. It is one thing to speculate about the universe and the nature of man, or to indulge in wonder and awe at the unknown. But it is quite another to treat myth and imagination as fact. Myth and faith do not save you when you leap from a plane. Science in the form of a parachute will. Science tries to give us an understanding of our world so that we can pursue our values. It does not create those values for us. It does not tell us what to desire or what to root our meaning in. It simply examines the nature of matter and energy, and shows us how things work and why. It is not the fault of science that it contradicts all the primitive myths of the religious. Nor is it the fault of the religious. These myths were created in a pre-scientific age when there was no alternative to "knowledge" through speculative imagination. There is a certain fault, however, in civilized people--educated in modern universities to the sciences which have dispelled all the astrological myths and have lit the night with millions of artificial suns--whom continue to deny what science tells them about the origin of the species and other matters. If one is going to rationally approach the idea of God then they ought not to say that fridges, stoves, nylons, fossils, and carbon-14 are the myths. Science is not a myth. Science is what we trust 24 hours a day. The thousands of different and contradictory myths are the myths. If God exists He is not a myth. Therefore, let us enjoy the myths as literature and as insights into our inner springs. Let us stop using them as justification for the waging of war and terror; for the procurement of power and social control.