Re: The Prejudice of Being Too Objective - response
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 20:32:31 -0400 (EDT)
Tom,
Excellent point in my opinion, that even objectivity is a tool which fails
if applied to every question. After all, I believe you will agree, that
objectivity can only take us to the limits of human experience (direct and
indirect).
It puzzles me how some who are entrenched in a dogmatism can see only the
gaps in the reasonings of those with views based upon hard evidence, as
supporting arguments based upon no hard evidence at all. How can one fail
to regard the chasm in his own arsenal of facts, while focusing only on the
tiniest incremental gaps in those of another. The basic theo-proselytic
arguments seem to me to be based upon an assumption (as you have suggested
in the message below) is not proved valid by virtue of the absence of
empirical evidence to the contrary, notwithstanding the absence of empirical
evidence to support the theological contention. That simply does not make
sense to me. But, on the other hand, if an individual wishes to disclose
what, for him or her, has been a spiritual realization or
experience, who am I to say he has only imagined it or is deluded. So long
as the spiritual sharer does not try to stake a claim on what has to be
"true" for another because he has felt, or observed or witnessed what the
other has not (or thinks he has)... and so long as he is willing to live and
think, and let live and think... discussion can proceed without waxing into
abuse.
It seems to me that since EVERY argument of humans can be no more accurate
than the tests it can be put to, and since NONE of us has all the answers
(so far) there is room for differences of opinion, and healthily so. But if
any human believes, or wishes to assert, that only he has reached the right
conclusions about any final and certain thing... that's putting one's own
self up as the judge of others as well as self.
Accordingly, one reason I enjoy reading your words is because you seem to me
to have an excellent way of giving others room to make their own choices
about what to believe, while maintaining a right to have arrived at your own
current stances, as well -- along with a willingness to listen courteously
and weigh other's stances and respond to them as to how their data and
trains of thought do or do not work for you. That strikes me as being as
good as it is ever going to get. (You asked another not to try to paint you
into corners of their own making. Bravo ! How odd that some feel a need to
do that -- a need, apparently, to validate their own thinking by trying to
assert that yours is flawed -- a need to make strawmen of your position on a
given thing, and attack those strawmen, instead of examining the voids in
their own.)
I enjoy visualizing the wheels turning in your words as you write, as they
always seem infinitely reasonable to me, whether I have arrived at the same
place you are in, at any given moment, or not. Isn't that, after all, the
best ANY of us can do -- be reasonable and not try to demand a self-asserted
right to be right.
I'm sure you are familiar with the studies cited in the June 2005 issue of
Scientific American (whether you read the mag or not) pertaining to evidence
that mutated bio-parents can, somehow, come up with offspring that revert
back to prior characteristics -- where biologists have gone to strenuous
lengths to rule out any such blatant intervention as cross pollination or
other pollution of the experiment's controls.
I think you will agree that there are good, well-informed and well-reasoned
likelihoods as to the role played in this phenomenon by RNA and by DNA
copying errors (or whatever it is called, where copies are determined to
have been made by DNA of mice, rice, humans and other species, according to
the author of the article, "... from the strand opposite the one that
specifies a protein."
(I know, and you know, some will respond to this citing by attacking the
source as not being peer-reviewed, without
following the trail of the information back to where it HAS been peer
reviewed and redundantly verified in lab; but we get used to that kind of
ruse, don't we.)
Anyhow, the point I really want to get to is this: THERE STILL REMAINS
MUCH RESEARCH DATA NEEDED before anyone can state finally and unequivocally
that the causus of the phenomenon is (whatever). Nobody really KNOWS. All
anyone is really sure of is that reversions DO HAPPEN, and that controls
have been abundant in determining things that have NOT caused it, and that
some theories are worthy of being treated as more likely than others. I
mean no disrespect in saying this, but the stance that "it is a divine
miracle, related to divine intent" has never led to any new discovery about
how the microcosm and macrocosm we find ourselves in works. And if the
effort to figure that out had been stopped for religious reasons, the earth
would still be flat, there would be no molecules, and there would be no cure
for "curses" such as hydrophobia.
As for me, I am a person spiritually open, as well as scientifically open...
willing to learn... but impatient with those who would judge me or you or
our right to reach our own understanding and analysis of the best data
available to us, in coping with the world we live in as it is... and giving
credence to the fact that if a divine will wanted us to figure it out any
other way, we would do better to do it thata way.
I see nothing wrong with a self-honest, as well as outwardly honest, stance
of, "I don't know; but here is what I choose to believe."
Why some believe they have to devalue scientific inquiry for spiritual
reasons, or devalue faith for scientific reasons, is beyond me. Why not
render to the one that which it deals with and to the other what it deals
with. And let any and all choose without condemning or being condemned for
having the courage to say, "This is what seems most credible to me."
But let me return to your stance regarding objectivity as only one tool that
does not fill all the tool boxes of quality of human knowledge and
reasoning.
Openness is openness, as surely as skepticism is skepticism. But to assume
that there is no point in taking a stance, individually or collectively, is
equivalent to posing that no working hypothesis is useful or, on the other
hand, that no faith in anything unproven is useful. Neither argument stands
finally and clearly on its own feet.
So, yes, it does seem to me, at least, that objectivity is but one side of
the tool of reason, and assumption for purposes of thinking any thought, at
all, is the other side.
How interesting it is to me that anyone would claim that the validity of the
one side obviates the validity of the other.
How interesting. And how ironic. How unavoidable. How human.
g
<TomHendricks474@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:d72alc$24nd$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> All hail to thee, eternal spiritual Sun, who burns forever yet is not
>
> consumed!
>
>
> Life needs an energy source. However the first life may well have used the
>
> temperature gradient caused by volcanic vents to power chemical reactions.
>
> The source of this energy is radioactive decay of heavy metals in the
>
> Earth's interior, and not solar.
>
> Tom
> No. I don't think so. There are a LOT of problems with the vents:
> 1. earth is here because of the sun. 2. vents sterilize more than build
> 3. there is no cycle to the vents. 4. there is no wet/dry aspect such
> that dry would help condensation reactions of sugars, amino acids,
> nucleotides, 5. there is no UV. 6. vents are unstable, the sun cycle is
> constant. 7. And finally, take the sun out and you have no planet,
> no vents, etc.
> plus many more.
>
>
> On the more theological point, our understanding is that there is no
>
> intelligent intervention in basic physical processes.
>
> Tom
> Agreed but don't lock me into a either or situation - either
> its theo or its a fluke. The third choice, a reaction to a sun cycle
> is the one I choose. And many scientists seem to frown on any
> non fluke choice as being unscientific. I think the blindness to
> life as a reaction to the sun, not a fluke independent event,
> is the real prejudiced.
>
> My own view is that
>
> this is probably an artifact of our current level of science. If the
>
> sciences form a hierarchy with partical physics at the bottom and
> sociology
>
> at the top, we understand the middle fairly well but not the extremes.
>
> However no one is saying that your theory of consciousness, when you come
> to
>
> claim that Nobel prize, cannot involve some non-human intelligence.
>
>
.
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- The Prejudice of Being Too Objective - response
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