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

I believe that there is a mathematical methodology, but it is not named
such. Mathematics begins with a set of axioms. From these, theorems are
derived by strict logic. Anything that is not so derived but seems
reasonable is sometimes played with hypothetically, but is considered
distinct. There is a change that currently exercises mathematicians,
whether exhaustion of consequences with a computer program constitutes a
proof.

Note that math is not naturalistic, but may be applied to nature and lots
of other things. Modular arithmetic, for example, is applied to test
computations, but will not serve to provide the bottom line.
Dave (ASA)

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 14:18:59 -0500 mrb22667@kansas.net writes:
> 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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>
>
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Received on Fri Apr 3 19:55:35 2009