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From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: M-U-C-H S-H-O-R-T-E-R response to David Norris
Message-ID: <1137@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 12:38:42 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1137
Posted: Sun Jan  8 12:38:42 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jan-84 01:58:33 EST
References: <402@pyuxn.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 51

Rich Rosen says ...

    9. As far as faith goes, the difference between faith in what we have
    learned in school (???) and faith in god is that the former is borne out
    by evidence, and the latter is not.  

I feel that I can counter safely by stating that a lot of what is (and
was) believed to be true there was no evidence for.

Consider the Bohr model of the atom (which by the way, turned out to be
incorrect).  At the time of its development (late 1800s - early 1900s I
think -- correct me if I am wrong) it was taken to be the true model of
the atom.  (The model, for those who don't know, is that electrons orbit
the nucleus of the atom similarly to the way planets orbit a sum).  This
was replaced in the mid-1900s by the quantum theory of electrons
possessing certain excitation energies allowing them to occupy different
energy states.  (Again, correct me if I have erred in my description,
it's been a while since physics for me).  The point is that if the
evidence formerly believed about the Bohr model being true was *proven*
(more on that later) false, what can be said about the evidence itself?
One day someone will come along and prove quantum mechanics false (there
are already holes in it -- note the particle vs. wave theory for light)
and then we will have to restructure what we believe about the world to
the next theory.

If someone is willing to believe that mathematics and science is
true by evidence, and yet faith is false by lack of evidence, then I
seriously question their defense of such an argument, especially when
the evidence is shown to be incorrect.  Ancient man had evidence that
the sun rose and shined every day, until the first eclipse came, then
the evidence was false.  

About *proof*:  After considerable readings about Godel, Cantor and
Turing I concluded that there was no such thing as absolute proof, only
proof that exists relative to known information.  From this follows my
earlier arguments -- they thought the Bohr model was correct because the
mathematics they possessed bore it out to be so, but as soon as they
found a new mathematics to express themselves, the model was shown
false.

In summary, I conclude that Rich Rosen's point is not well taken,
because nothing in mathematics/science is absolutely conclusive,
therefore subject to criticism and refutation.  Just because you can't
*prove* the miracles of God to be miracles doesn't mean they are not,
any more than proving that quantum mechanics accurately describes the
atom. 

-- 
--greg
...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!gds (uucp)
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