skepticism

Paul Arveson (arveson@oasys.dt.navy.mil)
Wed, 9 Oct 96 09:31:25 EDT

George Murphy wrote:

1) Speculations about what - or even if - the risen Christ told his
disciples about his experience are pointless. What we have is the
apostolic witness recorded in Scripture.
2) To again repeat the obvious: We receive signals (photons, helium
nuclei, fossils, &c) from the past. These are far from providing a
complete "picture" of what happened, but the notion that the past,
including the very distant past, is not subject to our observation is
flatly wrong.

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To reinforce George's point with a little illustration: I'm sitting here in
front of my computer screen in an air-filled room. I'm about a meter away, so
all the events I see on the screen are AT LEAST 3 nanoseconds in the past. Of
course my brain doesn't function at the speed of light, so it's probably more
like 100 milliseconds before I become aware of an event. Since these events are
in the past, then it means that there is no such thing as a direct, present
observation. All sensory knowledge derives from inferences from the past.
Whether Hume can justify these inferences or not is his problem, not mine.

Paul Arveson, Research Physicist
Code 724, NSWC, Bethesda, MD 20084
73367.1236@compuserve.com arveson@oasys.dt.navy.mil
(301) 227-3831 (W) (301) 227-1914 (FAX) (301) 816-9459 (H)