On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 02:08:04PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > Are you really willing to accept anything that is not subject to > scientific testing as no more real than God?
You are really cheating. You should at least answer that one question I asked before you get to ask me another one. But I'll give you a free one. I think that any knowledge that can never be tested by experiment is a poor and useless sort of knowledge, if knowledge it is at all. I guess I know where you are going with this, and if I'm right, I'd like to remind you about a discussion we had some time ago (years?) where I mentioned that most of my morals are based on what I think is the best way of advancing toward a Banks' Culture level of human development. And while that is not easily tested by experiment (I have only limited control over the ongoing experiment and as of now I can only run one experiment), it IS possible to test it experimentally. It just takes a very long time, and repeating it would be even more difficult. > P.S. I can give a long answer to your 20 questions if you really want > that; but it involves how I differ with some of the premises that underlie > the question...and would take a while to write clearly. Why don't we start at the one you just replied to (but did not answer) and go from there. I'm not sure if we'll get anywhere, however. You don't really consider yourself to be a typical religious person, do you? I think that you are exceptionally rational and scientific and skeptical most of the time, but it makes me uncomfortable sometimes to see the contortions you put your mind through to keep the religious/irrational part of your mind compartmentalized but alive. Naturally you would disagree with this, and we aren't likely to get anywhere on that subject, and I fear your detailed answers would keep leading back to this. And my point in asking the questions was that most, not all, religious people were quite irrational, and since you aren't a typical case, it hardly seems worthwhile. But if you think it would be productive, go ahead. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
