Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl resort Henning) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Why believe? Message-ID: Date: 8 Mar 91 05:48:50 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: SUNY Buffalo Lines: 37 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu BAKER, RICHARD ALAN writes: > ... The idea that no one can prove the existence of >anything is a common philosophical argument. >Thus there is no way that someone can say that when they put there hand in >fire it will be hot. Even though every time they put there hand in fire before >it was hot. Experience cautions me from sticking my hand too near a lit gas-burner; yet experience also informs me that one can put out a candle flame with one's fingers (carefully) without serious pain, and that my finger can remain within a sterno-flame for even somewhat longer without burning. I might never have found this out, had I stuck devoutly to the canon my mother taught me when I was young. Coals which appear to have burned down to ash, and no longer flame, can nonetheless burn; and steam can scald (the injury sustained is still, technically, a "burn"). "Fire burns" and "burning hurts" are useful starting-points, but they don't tell the whole story. My mother wasn't wrong, she merely simplified for the sake of safety. This served a useful purpose. This is all within verifiable experience (kids, you can try this at home -- but I'm not responsible :-) Heaven and god, e.g., are neither within verifiable experience, nor (IMHO) reasonable extrapolations of verifiable experience. They neither compel [my] belief, nor serve [me] a useful purpose. kph -- "The shrewder mobs of America, who dislike having two minds upon a subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by which means a world of cold and tedious speculation is dispensed with." -- Washington Irving