On Sep 6, 2004, at 11:22 AM, Dan Minette wrote:
From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The reason I prefer data over thought experiments is that one can check one's own thinking with data better than one can check it with a thought experiment...which usually turns out just as expected. :-)
I'll remind you of this the next time discussion of god comes up.
Sure, but remember the differences. She made statements about historical
phenomenon. God, love, self-awareness, right and wrong, and free will are
subject to neither emperical comfirmation or falsification.
In that case you're essentially wiling to concede that you accept the idea of a deity on faith; it can't be proved or disproved. Thus any attempt you make to "prove" such an entity's existence can, presumably, be ignored as irrelevant. ;)
I'm not certain about the testability of love, which appears to be pretty firmly traceable to biochemical processes (endorphin release) combined with pretty sensible evolved responses. That is I believe we're (collectively) well on the way to understanding love's source and to -- probably -- being able to detect when someone's feeling it. If it's the result of (or results in!) measurable hormonal/chemical releases in the bloodstream, it's detectable.
Right and wrong are concepts that change with time and society. They're as testable as language. That is, trying to "prove" that something is right (or wrong) is conceptually the same as trying to "prove" that something is (or is not) a word, or so it seems to me.
As for self-awareness -- I think this has come up before and I never asked. What's your definition of the term?
Free will is testable, though if some universal uberstructure exists that actually makes all of existence deterministic, you could argue that free will is just an illusion, that we're compelled to believe we have free will -- but that's a sophistry, on par with arguing that the people who openly hoax crop circles are just doing it to throw off the true believers in aliens crowds ... that is, we don't have an argument that can be rationally tested, but that doesn't mean we've got a rational -- or even practically applicable -- argument.
Circular logic and insular reasoning systems, while they render their protected states untestable, do not in themselves constitute evidence that given beliefs are valid.
-- WthmO
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