[MD] Faith/Skepticism

[MarshaV]

Wow.  I guess its time for the picadors to relax because here comes 
Toro, the big bull.  As far as I'm concerned, it just means a bigger 
pile to avoid.



At 11:47 AM 2/26/2009, you wrote:
>MP,
>
>Nice job of weathering the shit storm that forms around anyone suggesting
>that the MoQ is not rabidly atheistic. In rejecting the validity of an
>overtly theistic approach to the MoQ, many here substitute what they
>consider to be a ration of crap with a ration of crap that they personally
>find more palatable. The problem with the kind of postmodern position that
>Pirsig stakes out is that in some sense it's all a ration of crap and
>personal taste is all that guides us in selecting which ration to chew on.
>Notice the merger of the Pirsig's museum and menu metaphors?
>
>I suspect what is most galling about this is that you get painted as somehow
>being rationally remiss because you do not share the prevailing aesthetic.
>Hence dmb wants to berate you with his claim to "authority" and his posse of
>authorities who are really his sock puppets and Marsha wants to alternate
>between vicious attacks and claims of indifference.
>
>Theism, to digress briefly, is a concept broad enough, as you point out, to
>find plenty of common points within the MoQ despite what Pirsig claims in
>the "annotations". Pantheism in particular is more or less endorsed by
>William James and as Dawkins points out was essentially Einstein's view of
>the divine. It is also the theology of many native American tribes which
>oddly enough Pirsig seems to endorse despite what he says in the
>"annotations".
>
>There is also Whitehead's semi-theological process philosophy. Whitehead and
>Pirsig were intimately connected in the very first Master's thesis on the
>MoQ which is posted on Ant's site. Whitehead's view is that reality is a
>process, that the Good is not a noun but a verb. His view has been taken up
>by theologians and is called process theology.
>
>Even the supposedly atheistic religions like Buddhism are not as atheistic
>as some would claim when they paint a picture of reality as unitary, all is
>one and so forth. I often wonder how many of those espousing eastern
>mystical ideas on this forum actually buy into reincarnation and the other
>distinctly nonsensical baggage that comes with this line of thinking.
>
>With regards to faith and skepticism I have long argued that science does
>require a kind of faith. Bertrand Russell once said that the only label
>attached to him that he really agreed with was that of logical atomist. He
>said that what philosophers do is pick a concept and analyze it to the point
>that it cannot be analyzed any further. At some point neither rationalism or
>empiricism can give us the tools we need to decide what is right and what is
>wrong. This is the point where I would say faith kicks in. We decide what is
>right or wrong based on our intuitions, our emotional attachment to one set
>of concepts or another or our personal estimation of the probability that
>one view is not accurate than another. This then becomes a kind of belief in
>the face of a lack of reason or evidence for that belief. I like to call
>this a skip of faith. It bridges that gap of uncertainty by finding the
>shallowest and narrowest point at which to ford the river of doubt.
>
>As always the key here is how to handle uncertainty. Recently Platt listed a
>bunch "isms" that he seems to think he has pulled the pants off of. He
>thinks he has revealed in them some critical failure, paradox or error. It
>is a bit ironic that he claims to have unpantsed an emperor who prides
>himself in running around nude. All of those isms strive not only to lay
>bare the "assumptions" from which they proceed but to challenge those
>assumptions constantly. The "dogma" of those phantom "isms" is always
>subject to the "karma" of the practice of those "isms".
>
>I agree with you that there is always some element of faith in any set of
>beliefs but personally I think it is important to decide how big a leap you
>are willing to make.
>
>Krimel
>
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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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