From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 03 2004 - 19:46:33 GMT
Hi Mark SH,
> msh says:
> LOL. I'm not sure. It all started with your example of a guy
> wandering in from the desert, dehydrated. I beleive you via Witt
> would claim that we don't perform any sort of empirical analysis in
> this case, but simply believe that the guy is thirsty because he says
> so. I would say that our observation of his condition IS an
> empirical analyses. Furthermore, to quote myself from above, and with
> my counterexamples in mind, I would say that I disagree that we
> regularly make "faithful" leaps to certainty, about anything.
>
> I don't know if this disagreement is important enough to spend a lot
> more energy on. I'll let you decide.
I think there is a difference here worth exploring, but it'll come out again in another post I'm
sure. My head is hurting a bit at the moment (heavy day).
> msh says:
> Is there reliable historical evidence for such a scam? I don't know.
> But let's say there was and that such evidence did undermine your
> faith. Although what I know of you personally is limited to our
> email exchanges, on and off-list, I'd be willing to bet that your
> desire to participate in and make positive contributions to our
> common humanity would continue unabated. The action itself, I think,
> is what is admirable and important; not the banner beneath which the
> action is carried out.
Agreed. (I've just read the Da Vinci Code, that's what lay behind my example).
I would quote Scripture (he would wouldn't he) "Not everyone who says to me 'lord, lord' will enter
the Kingdom, but those who do the will of my father" etc. It's the life we live, with all its
virtues and vices, that counts, not the content of our heads. (That tends to see belief as something
volitional [and therefore deserving of merit] in any case, which I think is philosophically
confused).
Re your PS:
"Such," he said, "O King, seems to me the present life of men on earth, in comparison with that
time which to us is uncertain, as if when on a winter's night you sit feasting with your earldormen
and brumali --- and a simple sparrow should fly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly
fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of
the winter; but yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter
going into winter again, it is lost to our eyes."
"Somewhat like this appears the life of man --- but of what follows or what went before, we are
utterly ignorant."
(The Venerable Bede, (AD 673-735))
Regards
Sam
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