[ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds)

[Russell Wallace]

On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Inaccessibility is not license to posit the existence of anything that
> takes your fancy. What if I say that Santa Claus exists, but he lives just
> beyond the edge of the visible universe. Would you say that there is no
> "truth of the matter" regarding the existence of this Santa Claus?
>

Inaccessibility by itself isn't, but infinity in some cases is. Replace
"just beyond" with "somewhere beyond" and, given that our best theories
suggest the universe is infinite or at least exponentially larger than our
Hubble volume, I would say there is no basis for claiming his nonexistence
in that sense.

I am happy to include the Bible as a great work of literature, but I don't
> see the slightest reason why it should be taken any more seriously as a
> description of reality than, say, the Iliad and the Odyssey. If we had
> Homeric fundamentalists alive today we could have the same discussions with
> them as we do with Christian fundamentalists.
>

I'm not defending fundamentalism - on any side. I think "the Bible proves
the Earth was created in 4004 BC" is as false, counterproductive and
irrational as "science proves there is no God". The way I got into this
conversation was when I saw people praising fundamentalists as more rational
than moderates! It's the moderate religious view that has faith in God
(which can be neither proven nor disproven) and sees the Bible as a source
of moral truth without insisting that every word in it be taken literally,
that I'm defending.
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