[MD] Faith/Skepticism

[MarshaV]

At 10:49 AM 2/27/2009, you wrote:

>[Ron]
>Interesting how you made the point about faith. I particularly liked:
>"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."
>
>I also think that what defines the term is by what means one is willing to
>and be comfortable with, making that skip in certainty.
>
>[Krimel]
>You are right, comfort is a big issue. How much uncertainty can we tolerate.
>You can get by on purely emotional responses if all you care about is "good"
>or "bad". Any story will do. The tale of a giant dung beetle rolling the sun
>across the heavens is no more or less reassuring than Copernicus and Newton.
>But if you are curious about the details of how things hang together, you
>will gravitate toward the greater precision of a mathematical analysis of
>celestial mechanics. If all you care about is painting pictures and
>expressing emotion the dung beetle works just fine.


Krimel,

And I suppose you are suggesting that it is an either/or 
proposition?  Science or sun pushing dung beetles?  That type of 
choice is ridiculous.


Marsha


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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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