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

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 04/05/07, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

The ultimate example of this is the theory that everything that possibly can
exist, does exist: Tegmark Level 4 multiverse, or David Lewis's modal
realism. But I suspect that theists would not be satisfied with God having a
similar ontological status to other imaginary beings, even if there is a
sense in which those beings do exist.

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.
>

OK, I just used your post as an opportunity for a rant :)

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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