Greetings, Glenn,
On Thu, 4 Jul 2002 05:57:52 -0700 "Glenn Morton"
<glenn.morton@btinternet.com> writes:
> Hi David, Happy 4th to you all. I gotta go to work today. Strangely,
> they
> don't celebrate the 4th over here.
>
Just why do you think that the Old Country (you're in a neighbor that
kinda got swallowed) would celebrate the Colonial Fourth? I won't mention
that, while the colonials borrowed much, they led their elders into
greater freedom.
>
> It is this wide range of claims in philosophy which made me decide
> that
> philosophy wasn't for me. There is no grounding of truth, just
> assumptions
> followed by logical consistency. Now, you are correct that science
> has the
> advantage of having a judge for the divergent claims--observation
> and no
> such mechanism applies to theology. And that is in large part my
> point. The
> only way we have to judge the theological claims which come into our
> mind,
> or come to us in a vision is by the means of science. Look at all
> the
> divergent, mutually exclusive religious claims today. All claim to
> be the
> word of some god. How does one go about the job of determining
> which
> theology is the true theology? We simply can't decide that the
> religious
> claims of our parents are correct because all the adherents of the
> other
> religions have parents who told them that their religion was the
> correct
> one. Simply put, without some attachment to scientific observation,
> the
> veracity of religious claims are as adrift from verification as are
> the
> claims of Locke Berkely, Spinoza, Ficte, etc. And that turns
> theology into
> a game of what claims do I like the best rather than what claims are
> true!
>
> In short, if God did what you say, he left us with no way to
> determine the
> truth.
>
> glenn
>
I'm afraid you've forgotten what you should have learned in philosophy,
that there is NO scientific support for science, that science is totally
based on some assumptions which may be considered by philosophy. Have you
also forgotten that the earliest basis for the secularization of the
study of nature is found in the Hebrew scriptures? But that does not mean
that they were teaching science nor based on science. I commend to you
Hebrews 11:6, which emphasizes that any human connection to the deity is
based on faith. This can have no basis in science. Further, if you have
to know, you have to be other than human, for the only thing you know
indubitably is your own existence while you have experience, and you
cannot demonstrate that irrefutably to anyone else. Human beings are
finite, almost totally limited in true knowledge, though boasting great
things.
Dave
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