Re: [asa] Anti-Creationist Psychobabble On the Web

I think the view below -- that this wasn't needed until we needed to discuss
religion ... etc. -- has a good bit of truth in it. If the whole world is and
had always been atheist, then "atheist" wouldn't even be word as there would be
nothing to talk about. Until people started trying to abuse science to make
claims like "God does not work in our world", we had no reason to clarify:
"wait a minute --let's separate out your valid thought & process from the
illogical leaps" & hence was born the need to distinguish. But this was NOT the
birth of the "valid process" itself which is only now so elegantly described by
the phrase "MN". If nobody had ever driven at unreasonably fast or unsafe
speeds, there would never have been any signs posted or speed laws made.

--Merv
p.s. There is no term equivalent "mathematical methodology..." because nobody
has yet tried to abuse math towards conclusions where math can't really go. But
if they did --in a big enough way, the term would be born. But not the limits.
 Those already existed from the beginning.

Quoting David Clounch <david.clounch@gmail.com>:

> On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, D. F. Siemens, Jr.
> <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>wrote:
>
> Dave,
> One problem I have is I don't know what teacher A does differently by
> teaching MN than teacher B who does not. It makes no difference.
>
> Until you have a religious student to whom you feel the need to try to
> explain something. BINGO! This trips over the Lemon test (and some other
> things). IMHO. :)
>
> To those who are completely secular there is nothing to talk about. To those
> who are concerned with religion then MN is needed.
>
> An analogy (all analogies are flawed of course):
> If I go to the store and buy meat I don't need to know that its
> "methodologically natural" (even though someone may believe it might be).
> But if I go to the store and ask for Kosher meat, then religion comes into
> it. MN is like that.
>

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Received on Fri Apr 3 15:20:00 2009