Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!laura
From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Rich responds to Laura on "faulty" towers and perceptions
Message-ID: <5256@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Mar-85 13:38:58 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5256
Posted: Fri Mar 15 13:38:58 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Mar-85 13:38:58 EST
References: <589@pyuxd.UUCP> <4898@cbscc.UUCP> <4899@cbscc.UUCP> <3878@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <649@pyuxd.UUCP> <5216@utzRe: Rich responds to Laura oFri, 15-Mar-85 13:38:58 EST
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 35
Keywords: Occam, natural flow, objective

Human thought is limited. Human ability to perceive is limited. You can
work on perceiving and thinking better, though, but it pays to notice
*what* am I thinking. *how* am I thinking. Really and truly feeling
yourself think is hard work. (And where is the I that is doing the
thinking?) The normal tendancy is to build a model and say ``thinking
is like this'' which isn't the same thing.

Rich, I have nothing to say about the second half of your Logic and
Beleifs articles. They all predicate on some beliefs that you assume,
for instance that all religions are founded on a belief in some
external deity and that people believe in their religions because they
want to arrive at the conclusions that the will arrive at by assuming
the belief. 

On one level, I think that everybody believes in anythngthat they believe
in for this reason. However, on a more immdiate level, I have no problem
finding religious believers who are doing exactly this -- but I have
found others who *aren't*. They think that they have real evidence for
believing in what they believe in, and also think that they could
perscribe a course of action for you which would result in your having
the same evidence.

This is why I wanted to replace ``god'' with ``religious experience''
in your article. Religious experiences happen, and people come out
of them believing that they have real evidence for the existence of
God, or an ultimate reality, or *something*. I do not think that
your article adressed them at all, and I am much more interested in
them than in the people who infer the existence of God from the
existence of pain, or the bible, or the world. If God matters, then
It had better be able to communicate its existence to us. But,
further more, if it *does* communicate its existence to us, then
it matters!

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura