From: jocallag@bach.helios.nd.edu (john ocallaghan)
Subject: Re: Bellarmine on Galileo
Organization: OUC, University of Notre Dame
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 16:06:10 GMT

In article <1992Nov8.220316.27313@doug.cae.wisc.edu> kasab@luther.che.wisc.edu (Haig Kasab)  writes:
>
>Well, Steve, since I have been flamed for making very similar statements, I
>feel compelled to do likewise.  :)

Haig, if this refers to me, just thought I'd let you know that I generally
do not flame people; I prefer to argue strenuously with them.  If I had
flamed you YOU'D FEEL THE BURNS.  HA HA HA (Read those as demonic laughter)
=(:<) (Notice the horns on the frowny head?)

>In brief, the argument is that any experiment, although testing a
>hypothesis, rests upon a set of implicit and explicit postulates, including
>proper experimental design and conditions, and appropriate background theory
>for interpreting the data.  Therefore, the truth of "experimental fact" does
>depend on what you take as your starting point.
>
>Now, in the scientific community, there is often more agreement on what the
>correct set of postulates are, but if you look at those cases where there is
>a disagreement, the arguments are just as fervent as any religious
>discussion.  So, in both cases it boils down to the following:  what do you
>believe to be true?  What do those around you believe to be true?
>

I would prefer to say that, starting as a learner in a state of relative
ignorance, whom do you recognize as having authoritative knowledge and
consequently your teacher.  Given that your choice cannot be a judgement
of the truth of the knowledge of the teacher, since the supposition is that
you don't know it and want to learn it, why do you choose this teacher?
The paradigm instance here is the call of the apostles: Christ did not first
lay out a system of propositions for the apostles and disciples to judge true,
saying that if they judged them to be true they could follow Him; He said
follow me, and they got up and followed Him.  Only after they got up and
followed Him, did He begin to preach to them the Kingdom of God.  So why
did they get up and follow Him?  What did they recognize in Him prior to his
preaching the Good News to them?  Its also interesting to note that the
story indicates that many left because they could not bear what He was 
telling them, which seems to indicate that they lost sight of why they 
originally chose to follow Him.  Anyway, these are rambling on the nature of
faith, with religious faith being a paradigm instance.  I'm just trying
to indicate that faith is a much more widespread human phenomenon than
the modern world wants to admit imbued as it is with Enlightenment rationalism.
Religious faith is just a specific instance of this widespread human 
phenomenon.  And if faith is in general considered to be an irrational leap
then the majority of human life, including the activity of the the sciences,
turns out to be irrational.  On the other hand, if the majority of our 
activities are based upon acts of faith, and we judge these acts of faith
not to be irrational, then we would want to know why religious faith is 
singled out as involving an irrational leap of faith.  Not that you were
suggested that; like I said, this is more speculation now on the nature of faith.

Peace,
John

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