[UA] "I believes in Science!" (but Do You Believe In Love?)

[Epoch]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Kevin Mowery wrote:

> > And here's where we trip up.  You gotta jump back a step, man.  /Why/ can
> > you call it a fact (By which I presume you mean: it's a fact that
> > generally pencils fall when dropped) because it's happened consistantly
> > in the past?
> >
> > Answer:  Because you've made a leap of faith that says "what is observed
> > empirically serves as a predictor for the future."  Or, perhaps, a better
> > way of saying it would be "what is observed empirically shows a general
> > case."
> 
>     Every night, do you worry that the sun might not rise tomorrow?  If not,
> you've made the same "leap of faith."

Sure I have.  And I don't get defensive about it.

>  It'd be cool to be able to breathe
> water, wouldn't it?  Try it.  Didn't work?  Maybe next time it will.  Keep
> trying--it's just a numbers game.  Sure, no one else can wrap a blanket
> around their shoulders and fly--but that's no evidence that *you* can't do
> it.

You're right, there's no evidence that you can't.  And the sooner you get
over trying to prove that, "Well, that doesn't /count/ as faith.  Everyone
does it!" the sooner you can get on to exploring the interesting parts of
your belief system.

>     We couldn't function if we couldn't make that "leap of faith."  Being
> able to spot that pattern is a pretty early developmental stage.

The Aztecs didn't make the leap of faith that you initially suggested to
me.  They worried enough that the sun wouldn't rise tomorrow that they
sacrificed people every night (at least, so my 3rd grade history books
claimed to me -- I've never bothered to actually fact check that).  Are
you suggesting that their entire culture was incapable of pattern
recognition?

Much as you may not want to admit it, your axioms are not everyone
else's.  A strict interpretation of Christian beliefs, suspending the idea
of God-The-Clockmaker, suggests that, in fact, the only reason the sun
rises or the pencil falls is because God /makes/ it happen, each and every
time.  Sure, it seems like God's pretty consistent about that kind of
thing, but there's no overarching law, and believers are warned not to try
to comprehend God's motives or future actions ("He moves in mysterious
ways.")

Epistomologists of various sorts have seriously wondered if there's any
way to prove that we aren't all just in a dream world, in which case,
presumeably all of your consistant features are only facts of someone's
subconscious.

Do I believe any of that?  Nope.  I fundamentally believe in an ordered
universe that has consistant laws.  But it's faith, buddy, nothing more or
less.

Mike

--
"Like H.P. Lovecraft's dark and inbred Maine, only with grits!"
		- Greg Stolze


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