From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: Competition for Truth
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 05:22:27 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.064814.8959@smds.com> rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
>In article <la7k81INN7gg@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> salem@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM (Bruce Salem[CONTRACTOR]) writes:
>
>>	You must go further and cite the "science is religion" ruse.
>>A strategy in this group has been to blur the distinctions and to
>>rhetorically manipulate ideas so that it seems that we are all speaking
>>the same languages when we are not. So, Creationists intentionally lie
>>sometimes in order to gloss over the destinctions.

	The response that follows is very thought provoking. I feel
a need to want to get to the bottom of the notion of "world view"
as some notion of a non-comprehensive language.

>I would be careful about about using the word, lie, in this context.
>Everything can be viewed from a political perspective, or a religious
>perspective, or from an artistic perspective, etc.  I have known, as
>I suppose we all have, people to whom the political signifigance is
>everything, to the point where truth and falsity are simply irrelevant
>issues.  I once was bemused by reading a "politically correct" critique
>of scientology which scathingly denounced scientology on the grounds
>that it favored and appealed to the middle class.

	I must acknowledge how my characterization of Creationism could
get out of hand, just like broadbrushing all Christians with the errors
pecular to Fundementalism. But, I do think that to view Creationism as
a political crusade where the means justifies the ends, even if that
includes an outright lie, is an accurate portrayal. I recall that there
have been several exchanges in which Creationists have misquoted, or
quoted out of context, the reservations scientists have had about aspects
of evolution, or created such an impression where none was justified.

	I was really reminding people of a rhetorical tactic that I used
to hear in this group that runs like "Basically science accepts things
on faith, so does religion, therefore science and religion are the same."
That inference has been soundly defeated many times in this group with
the stuff left out about how science and religion are different about
what experience they use and how they reason from it. As many people do
know that there is some basic difference between science and religion, if
your political goal is to insolate your community from the effects of a
secular state you believe is based on science, then you could lie about
there being a deep distinction between science and religion. The only
"World View" you need is that the means justifies the ends.

>Similarly people for whom the religious perspective is primary will
>see the important aspect of science as being religious.
>
>A philosopher named Pepper [and not Popper] wrote a rather interesting
>work classifying competing world views.  I don't remember the categories,
>except for animism and materialism.  A main point was that a world view
>is more or less complete in itself, in that everything can be accounted
>for and described in terms of the world view.  According to Pepper there
>were about eight different major world views that people use, of which
>about half, e.g. animism, have fundamental difficulties.

	It seems that there are critical stages in the intellectual
development of people where they are susceptable to choosing to take
one of these world views to heart and living the rest of their lives
according to it. One of the critial times seems to be around age seven,
and Myers-Briggs temperment typology has a great deal to do with this.
People seem to be distinct as to temperment about their ability to
suspend judgement, or rush to judgment, to crave moral certitude and
guidence, or not the need it, etc. etc.

	Would you be so kind as to enumerate Pepper's classification.
It may help me get to some basic attitudional choices that form the
foundations for the dichotomies in this group. It could be an avenue
around the usual rhetoric.

>Someone who thinks within the framework of one world view interprets the
>statements and perspectives of other world views in the terms of their
>own world view.  Most people, to the extent that they consider these
>matters at all, have some capacity for understanding other world views.
>Others do not.

	This relates to my point about there being specialized languages
for each world-view. Another way to view that is that the epistamoligical
apparatus for each approach differs in emphesis. Certaintly is can be said
that science abandons certainty and even most questions for emperical
correspondance (A. J. Ayer). and that the other ways of knowing you
wrote about a couple of postings ago take different mixes of the urgancy
of questions along with the need to know, or the ability to know. The
definition of Truth changes along with the kinds of questions that can be
formulated within the linguistic scope of that world view.

>Science and religious fundamentalism live in different worlds.  It seems
>to me to be perfectly reasonable for a fundamentalist to view religion
>as science.  Within their world view competing world views are interpeted
>as competing religions.  From my perspective this is rather close
>minded, but then, there is no such thing as close mindedness in the
>universe of a truly close minded person.

	I am still drawn to the idea that many of the conservative
religious movements are fundementally political in nature. You know
that the idea of "politics", or the interests of a "Body Politic" is
comparatively recent in history, comming from the 17th and 18th Cent-
uties of Europe, at a time when class and economic interests were
challenging the older religious and ethnic identities people had for
so long. In a sense, then, to call what people view as a religious
identification a political position doesn't do it justice. But when
that effort is played out against the backdrop of a subculture
attempting to isolate itself from the rest of society, or using the
courts and the political process to further its aims, even if it has
to disguize the aims, then the conflict and the method of confrontaion,
if not the impetus, is political.

Bruce Salem