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[yak@collab] Re: -> fundamentalism

To: yak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: John Sechrest <sechrest@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 17:46:02 -0800
Message-id: <200401120146.i0C1k2229897@jas.peak.org>


Wow... deja vu... I am sure I have been in this conversation before.    (01)

What happens to reason when you don't have anything to work with.
Everyone has to at least start with some assumptions. At
even if you use reason 100%, (which I doubt), that set of assumptions
is in itself an act of faith.    (02)

I was sitting in my logic class in college, when I went thru
godel's proof.... And it hit me. Any system, has things that it can 
not describe. So even logic and reason tell you directly that
there are things that they can not work with.    (03)

Therefore, it is not possible for everything to be reason.    (04)




"Peter P. Jones" <ppj@concept67.fsnet.co.uk> writes:    (05)

 % On 11 Jan 2004 at 15:37, Chris Dent wrote:
 % 
 % [...]
 % > 
 % > Many people who complain about fundamentalist thinking have
 % > problems with it because they (the complainers) have the mistaken
 % > belief that there is a form of thought that is not based on faith and
 % > that that form is closer to some absolute form of correct. That belief
 % > is fundamentalism in a nutshell.
 % > 
 % > It's faith all the way down, whether your god is Science or Shiva.
 % 
 % (Ahem) I wish to disagree.
 % It isn't faith all the way down, it's reason. 
 % 
 % Here we are in the universe...
 % 
 % Either there is something beyond or there isn't.
 % If there is then we'll be ignorant of it.
 % If there isn't something beyond then there isn't, so we don't have to 
 % worry.
 % Therefore, we reason that at one side there might be ignorance.
 % At what point does that acknowledgement require faith? Surely it is 
 % reasoned?
 % 
 % Within what universe we know, many people reason that it is more 
 % instrumental to believe in critical reason as providing better 
 % explanations. They don't have to have faith in reason to do that - 
 % they know it's better because the results are better 'in concreto': 
 % it is continuously testable.
 % 
 % -- 
 % Peter
 % 
 % -- 
 % This message is archived at:
 % 
 % 
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=4001D900.8364.7A41AE@localhost    (06)

-----
John Sechrest          .         Helping people use
                        .           computers and the Internet
                          .            more effectively
                             .                      
                                 .       Internet: sechrest@peak.org
                                      .   
                                              . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest    (07)

-- 
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