[MD] The End of Faith

[skutvik at online.no]

Steve and Gav.

23 Jan. you wrote:

> Steve:
> Religions' claims that are to be accepted on faith are not only in
> conflict with the claims made by science. They are in conflict with
> the claims made by other religions. If Christianity is true, Islam is
> false and vice versa. They can't all be true because they all say that
> the others are false, but they can all be false.

This was a gem, I'm still chuckling and will abstain from adding 
anything as not to spoil the razor-sharp point. 

Gav had said:
> >faith is a knowledge born of transcendent experience.
> >the intellect can only reflect upon this experience.
> >the experience itself, the nature of the experience is
> >the empirical 'data'.

A transcendent experience (TE) for a Muslim makes him/her 
know Allah better. The classic Christian TE made the mystics 
know God's plans. These are the immense force of the social 
bonds that the MOQ reveals. It also reveals that intellect has its 
own bonds,  no less powerful, that determines TEs. Renè 
Descartes had the revelation (after a long period of doubt) that he 
existed because a he was a thinking being. The scientist who 
found the benzene molecular configuration had a vision of 
dancing rings - not dancing angels.        

No, intellect does not merely reflect (this is intellect's own 
pompous view) Intellect is a a value level that creates its own 
reality and its own TEs. See Pirsig's revelation resulted in an 
intellectual-based insight so extraordinarily "transcendent" that it 
could not be contained by intellect. We will soon start having 
Quality-based TEs. ;-)     

IMO

Bo