Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] Intelligent designists fight back.



Please read this again:

If a supernatural belief system assists OK,


Perhaps I should have written more forcefully: GREAT!


Examples abound: Tutu and MLKJ for two -- even Carter after the presidency yoke was lifted.

I was conflating the idea that the result of belief was to make a result, as if it were true (second kind of truth) and the placebo effect, which is not a good analogy.

bc, unfortunately, also agrees w/ the expression "Opiate of the masses." of which he was not thinking when he wrote the below.


Brian Whatcott wrote:

bc's response quoted below, supposes that people with
religious convictions(as described) are precluded from
'intelligent. active, aggressive, effort to ameliorate their
[the disadvantaged] status' when the thrust of my note
was that these efforts are consequential (often enough)
on the possession of these very belief systems.
That is to say, it seems to be non-sequitur.

Labeling an effective social/ethical/moral system as placebo-like
is, if I may say, a not unusual US attitude of disrespect to
people of spiritual extension, which is particularly unbecoming
to teachers.

How perverse!

Brian W

At 03:55 PM 1/6/2008, you wrote:

"... viable [?] belief systems."



I suggest this "second type of truth -- placebo like" is a poor second
to intelligent. active, aggressive, effort to ameliorate their status.
If a supernatural belief system assists OK, but I fail to see it as
necessary.

bc


Brian Whatcott wrote:


At 05:48 PM 1/5/2008, John Clements, you wrote:




The ID people have never thought ahead that if the gaps in
understanding are

closed, then their primary argument for ID and hence for God is also gone.
So I contend that ID proponents do not know how science works. It works by
creating models of what we observe. It can not propose unseen, untestable
agents....
John M. Clement
Houston, TX



I contend, that in the American context in particular, there are many
non-religious scientists who think that when the chinks, cracks and gaps
in our scientific understanding are closed, there will be no further point
in religious belief.

I further contend that these scientists in general, do not understand how
religion works. But there again, a good proportion of religious people
are in the same mind-set - though I think I see signs that clerics,
priests, pastors, and gurus of other flavors have a better concept:
that there is a more 'divine' effect on peoples' affairs when
more of them have viable belief systems.

In particular, that the disenfranchised, the poor, the weak,
the fallible, the criminal, the sinful (no matter how defined)
do better in general, (the incidence of vengeful religious
persecution in some cases notwithstanding) and that even the
beneficent, the forgivers, the helpers, the supporters have
their own social or psychic rewards....




Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!
_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l