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From: csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: RE:  Weird Science (response)
Message-ID: <882@mit-vax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 07:01:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-vax.882
Posted: Thu Sep 26 07:01:39 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Sep-85 06:28:45 EDT
References: <2250346@hpfcms.UUCP> <27500125@ISM780B.UUCP>
Reply-To: csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 68
Summary: 

In article <27500125@ISM780B.UUCP> jim@ISM780B.UUCP writes:
>Will you goddamn frigging anti-intellectual religious aholes please keep your
>putrid hubristic self-justifying wire-in-the-brain "ignorance is bliss"
>syllogistically circular crap out of net.philosophy?
>
>"How do you know that?"
>"It says so in the book."
>"How do you know the book is right?"
>"The book contains the truth."
>"How do you know that?"
>"It says so in the book."
>"Oh, of course."

Gosh Jim, maybe you should read what Jesus said about hypertension.

A lot of people want to send anything that says "religion" to
net.religion. The problem is that within net.religion, religion is
always a valid point, in net.philosophy, you can say religion is
*philosophically* unsound.

Now, to the point:  Any good scientist knows that a coordinate system
MUST have an origin in order to mean anything. Thus, we can choose the
Bible as our absolute reference. Therefore, we don't have to prove it's
the truth, because we just defined it as such. There are some who argue
that this is a bad idea, because the Bible is not valid. There are
others who say that this is a bad idea because it is not consistent.
There are, however, some people who say it is both consistent AND valid
and therefore is a good "origin". These people are idiots. Here's why:

THE GODELLAIN COMPLETENESS THEOREM:

A system cannot be consistent and valid at the same time.

This is why the Bible contains such clever devices as "DON'T LOOK AT ANY
OTHER RELIGIONS" in it. (That's one of the Ten Biggies.)

Contrast this with The Church of the Subgenius which claims to be
universally inconsistent and therefore universally valid. This Church
suggests that you explore other religions and claims that by doing so,
you will realize that they are full of it. To quote another netter, Paul
Zimmerman:
	"If you want proof of God's evil, look in the Bible."

It's true. Jehovah really sucks big time, but Paul claims that that is
absolute proof of His existence, because the known universe sucks too.

Existentialism shows us that we can't know anything, we can only believe
certain things. Other things can be inferred by cross-referencing your
beliefs. Person A believes in the Big Bang, person B in Genesis. Both
observe that the stars seem to be billions of years old. Both come to
different conclusions. One of these conclusions is easier to believe.
Lately, American society has been experiencing some sort of shift in
values. People's beliefs are changing. Along with it is a scary
resurgence of "Creationism." There are a lot more person B's around.
(Anybody who's read net.origins can make their own decision on the
consistency and validity of "scientific creationism.")

Every time you espouse a philosophy, you drag your religion into it. Now
go home and read the Bible! Praise the lord!

-- 
Charles Forsythe
CSDF@MIT-VAX

"Ordinary F___ing people -- I hate 'em. Ordinary people spend their
	lives avoiding tense situations; repo man spends his life
	getting into tense situations."


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