From: STANKULI@UWF.BITNET (stan kulikowski ii)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edpolyan
Subject: spiritual education?
Date: 18 Nov 92 22:07:07 GMT
              <EDPOLYAN@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU


  this is really not a flame...

>>
>>  From:         ADM_FDOHERTY@JMUVAX.BITNET    17 Nov 1992
>>
>>    Naturalism as a world view basically says that
>>  we evolved from nothing by natural selection (chance?) plus time.
>>

  i believe a more fair characterization of evolution might be:

              prebiotic soup
              species' genetic compatability
              allelic correspondence and crossover
              spontaneous mutation
              natural selection
              ecologic niche parameters (convergence or divergence)
              catastrophic extinctions

  this is hardly (nothing + chance + selection + time).  there are a lot of
mechanisms which are being found in the fossil record and existant life
forms.  this list is far from complete.  that is what makes evolutionary
biology an interesting field of inquiry.


>>
>>    It says that there is no supreme being who created the universe and
>>  that we are not accountable to anyone except ourselves.  In this case
>>  there is no "spirit" because there is no supreme being.
>>

  no biologist i have ever known says this.  what they say is that natural
processes are sufficient to account for the diversity of species that we find.
there is no evidence of any supernatural tampering with natural processes,
and no need to suppose any.

  proving the nonexistence of any proposition, let alone an existent being,
is impossible to do without the possession of all empirical data.
nonexistence proofs only happen in finite mathematical exercises, not real
physical data.  nothing short of quantifying the entire physical universe
could prove that a god was not hiding in some corner somewhere.

  i take it from your message that 'spiritual values' is equivalent to the
assertions for the existence of supernatural beings.  the best in your
viewpoint being that inferred in selected literature from 539 BC (jewish
torah, began writing at the end of the babylonian exile) to the beginning of
the dark ages (386 AD st jerome's vulgate).

  i suppose you are aware that there is no direct historical evidence for the
existence of biblical figures like david and solomon?  they would have been
illiterate caananite kings, not jewish at all.  the caananite idols were
removed from the temple of jerusalem after the return from babylon.
egyptian scholars were keeping close track of political activity in palestine
all through those centuries, leaving contemporaneous written documents, and
there is no record of any old testament activities before jeremiah.  there is
a similar problem with new testament materials, both contemporaneous (0 AD)
roman and jewish writings do not support.   like mentioned earlier,
nonexistence proofs are impossible to make.   when claims for spiritually
induced information differ from historical data, it is naieve to claim that
we give equal educational treatment.  do you suggest we retain the phlogistan
theory of combustion because it was once used as a possible explanation which
reproducible procedure does not support?

  personally, i know of no problem in the study of moral values.  even in the
historical study of religious sources for some of them.  the trouble with
religious moral codes, however, is the frequency with which the explanation
for them is ascribed to the agency of these supernatural beings.  we do a
disservice to children if we give them a view that morals are necessarily
related to spirits.  even in religions, afterall, we can find confuscianism
in which right behavior is described in terms of the superior man, without
reference to the nonnatural processes.  the reasoning of right and wrong
should definitely be separated from questions on the existence of magical
entities.

  last week here at UWF, we had a group of religious people protesting a
curriculum package the woman in the next office was working on.  it was a
unit on self-concept.  they took it to the school board because the unit
tried to show children that they were basically good inside, a positive
self-concept.  this was undermining their religious instruction of original
sin, without which they believe the children would never reach the conviction
of guilt needed for salvation.

  my office mate said she hopes that the russians keep those 10000 american
evangelists when they get them.
                               stan

    .                  stankuli@UWF.bitnet
   ===
   : :     when a thraskin puts fingers in its ears, it is polite to shout
   ---                                          -- old venusian proverb
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU