Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!uwslh.UUCP!lishka From: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: The Godless assumption Message-ID: <19880823022420.7.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 23 Aug 88 02:24:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 95 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu To: comp-ai-digest@rutgers.edu Path: uwvax!uwslh!lishka From: Fish-Guts Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: The Godless assumption Date: Mon, 22 Aug 88 14:32 EDT References: <19880820041348.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: Fish-Guts Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison, State Hygiene Lab Lines: 85 In a previous article, Marvin Minsky writes: >Date: Sat, 13 Aug 88 01:47 EDT >From: Marvin Minsky >Subject: The Godless assumption >To: AILIST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU, MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU > > >Andrew Basden warns us > >> Why should 'religious' not also be 'practical'? Many people - >> especially ordinary people, not AI researchers - would claim their >> 'religion' is immensely 'practical'. I suggest the two things are not >> opposed. It may be that many correspondents *assume* that religion is >> a total falsity or irrelevance, but this assumption has not been >> proved correct, and many people find strong empirical evidence >> otherwise. > >Yes, enough to justify what those who "knew" that they were right did >to Bruno, Galileo, Joan, and countless other such victims. There is >no question that people's beliefs have practical consequences; or did >you mean to assert that, in your philosophical opinion, they simply >may have been perfectly correct? I find the above statement by Mr. Minsky to be out of line. It is true that religious beliefs have been used *as*excuses* to commit horrible attrocities (witch burnings, the Crusades, Mr. Minsky's examples above, etc.), but I believe that "science" has been used *as*an*excuse* in the same way (the Nazi's horrible experiments on Jewish people, for instance). Furthermore, both science and religion can be used as excuses for killing and attrocities in the future. Personally, I think that "science" is but a set of beliefs also. One can reject science as readily as on can reject religions. I also propose that for some people a given religion (Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, African religions, personal religions, Pagan religions, or whatever else) describes their world better than Science; for them religion is a more appropriate (and *practical*) set of beliefs than science is. For many people (myself included), religion and science both provide "appropriate" ways of describing the universe around them. >I hope this won't lead to an endless discussion but, since we have an >expert here on religious belief, I wonder, Andrew, if you could >briefly explain something I never grasped: namely, even if you were >convinced that God wanted you to burn Bruno, why that would lead you >to think that that makes it OK? I propose an alternative question: if you were convinced that, in order to "better mankind" (in the name of science and scientific curiosity), one would need to experiment on and kill countless numbers of animals, would that reason make it OK? How much farther does the same arguemnt need to be taken in order to justify maiming and killing of human beings for experiments? Be really careful when you begin to generalize. Many religions advocate killing and sacrifices, and many do not. There exists a religion where the final goal is to *stop* killing as many creatures as possible (according to an Eastern religion class I took taught by David Knipe, himself a student of Eliade). Science and religion can both be used as excuses for killing, and they can both provide reasons to prevent it. ----- A final note: I see no reason why religion and science cannot coexist together in one's personal beliefs (they do in mine). I see no reason why science should deny the "practicality" of religions, or vice versa. Although some religious sects (esp. Christianity, Judaism, and Catholicism) sometimes clash with science on issues such as evolution vs. creationism, other religions (such as some sects of Buddhism) accept outside beliefs (e.g. science), which has aided in the spread of those religions into various cultures. -Chris [p.s. if anyone feels that this does not belong in comp.ai.digest, I am perfectly willing to discuss this via email.]-- Christopher Lishka ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu Immunology Section (608)262-1617 lishka@uwslh.uucp ---- "...Just because someone is shy and gets straight A's does not mean they won't put wads of gum in your arm pits." - Lynda Barry, "Ernie Pook's Commeek: Gum of Mystery"