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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (247518)	3/16/2014 12:56:45 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541986

"all of it is faith based." I'm afraid you sound a bit like the creationists here- trying to insist the Bible is a relevant as evolution, in a science class, because both things are "faith" based. It's a totally false equivalency of belief. The problem, as I see it, is that logic allows for new information, and logical systems actually seek new information- as science does, and it's testable and repeatable- in fact it's founded on that. Religion, untestable as it is, is pretty much a closed system. Look at the ossification of the Christian Bible, the Torah or the Koran. When were these things written? And by whom? And how could anyone believe the words of primitive nomads or agrarian tribesman would be the way to order a life now, any more than the Eddas would be. Some religions claim to admit new information, and I believe the Dalai Lama has said that when his religion and science are in conflict, the religion must make room for science, and bend to new information. I'd be less anti- religion if all religions did that. I think I've actually read Rorty.

To: JohnM who wrote (247518)	3/16/2014 1:46:19 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541986

<< Sam, on the other hand, is making a claim of a different sort. It's less a statement of faith than a brief but superb summary of the results of scholarship. How each of these, philosophy or scripture, are then used conversationally to insist folk should believe thus and so (dogma) or I believe thus and so (confessional) is a different matter.>> Maybe I don't understand what you are saying above? There are two uses for philosophy and science. That which is explored for the truth (unto itself) to the degree we can know that. And that applied to the individual, which is relative. I think most scientists, and indeed philosophers, at first are just interested in finding the truth. That search, and the way we do it, is what made us contemporary with the ancient Greeks as Will Durant says. Reason versus myth. And it is hard enough to find the truth, without interjecting unsubstantiated ideas that lack reason, into the soup. To me the sophistication of ideas is the objective; and what epicure said very eloquently, and correctly, is that on a level playing field of pure ideas (like reality, logic and democracy), the ancient Greeks, in the totality of the exercise, were far advanced over any religious writings. My reading certainly confirms that, and I looked everywhere.