[MD] Metaphysics

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Krimel]
We went over all this about two years ago and I tend to side more 
with Ian. I do think faith is involved when we face the unknown. To 
me the question is how much.

[Arlo]
Well like I said, operating from a certain set of contingent premises 
is pretty much unavoidable. I guess for me the issue is with the 
notion of "faith". I see it differently, Krimel. "Faith" is held in 
spite of contrary evidence. "Contingence" (not to hijack Ian's word 
here) is held, well, contingent on a constant re-evaluation with 
consistency in experience. I do not have "faith" that when I turn on 
the spigot water will flow into my sink. I hold that in contingency, 
and if I see a broken pipe in my basement, I will no longer expect 
water out of my spigot*.

So to the issue of whether or not people accept provisionally the 
experience of others in lieu of their own, of course they do. This is 
Mark's issue that because I, Arlo, have not personally been 
underneath the earth and with my eyeballs saw plate tectonics then my 
belief in "plate tectonics" is simply another theism, no better and 
no worse than those who believe the earthquake was the result of a 
voodoo-smacking angry deity. But the distinction is that the former 
is held provisionally, and experience refines and informs its 
evolution, while the latter is held absolutely and in spite of 
contrary experience. To use the word "faith" for each is simply 
problematic, and it is this misconception that leads Mark to see 
science, the MOQ, Christianity and everything else as simply 
competing faith-based theisms.

So to me the question is, obviously, not "how much", but a matter of "kind".

[Krimel]
Having said that, I do find it distressing when Mark and Platt and to 
a certain extent Marsha use this distinction of degree to claim no 
difference at all.

[Arlo]
I get the sense that Marsha disparages "science" as part of a larger 
criticizing of both "intellect" and "society" in the face of 
immediate, personal experience, and on that note I have much sympathy 
for her position. Platt, of course, is simply beating the 
anti-intellectual drums of right-wing ideology. Mark I feel is 
somehow personally slighted by Pirsig's "anti-theistic" comment and 
is trying to validate theism within this context, and is simply 
following the same path as other pissed-off theists before him. And 
now that I've psycho-analyzed them, I think its time for an ale.