Oh the pressures from beyond our control that attempt to force us to
conform to someone Else's Beliefs.
I was thinking of what pressures Mostafa must have undergone to make
him as rigid as he appears, but we all have our personal demons to
battle. My growing up years were back in the American Dark Age. Born
during Roosevelt's first term, my world was one of lingering
depression, World War II, the Korean War, and McCarthyism.
Also, having had to live during such horrors as Nixonstein,
Reaganloff, and TWO, count them, 2 George Bushes. As if the burning
Bush was not enough. And of course there were our two Republicrats,
Slick Willie and Bumbling Barack, both with lips pursed to Wall Street
while giving the finger to Joe/Jane Public. Of course I may simply be
grumping over the fall of my childhood hero, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. I clung to my memory until having to confront the truth of
his New Deal. It was a New Deal only if you were White, and mostly
Male. FDR sold out Negroes and Japanese as well as doing nothing for
Latinos. Women, who had only recently gained the right to vote, were
still nearly half a century away from any relief from male oppression.
Maybe LBJ, whom I personally found disgusting, did more for the entire
population than any other president. And speaking of women, I would
vote a tie between the two most disgusting First Ladies in my
lifetime. Ladybird and Mamie. My vote for the greatest First Lady
goes to Eleanor Roosevelt. The Grand Dame of America.
And yet, when I hear that old familiar voice saying, "We have nothing
to feeah but feeah itself", my heart goes all a flutter.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/5/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> When I was in elementary school - I forget which grade - we were given
> the assignment of reading as many books as we could in the school year.
> We were to keep a record of these books on index cards classifying them
> as fiction or nonfiction. There may have been some subcategories too.
> The teacher insisted that any books about dinosaurs be classified as
> fiction because the bible had nothing to say about dinosaurs. We would
> have actually have gotten a reduction in our grade for the project if we
> didn't classify them as fiction too.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> J.K. Rowling
> " I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for
> believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist! "
> ― J.K. Rowling
>
>
>
>
> On 12/5/2018 7:34 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
>> Well said, Roger.
>> An aunt and uncle of mine told me that they did not want me to read
>> stories about dinosaurs to their son. They said that such stories
>> were the work of Satan. The Bible proved that the Earth was only a
>> bit over 5,000 years old. Scientific evidence was either deliberately
>> invented or based on poor research. Where could I turn? It came down
>> to my word against the Word of God. I made the comment that my
>> information also came from a book. Oops! I was told that such talk
>> was blasphemous, and if I continued talking like that I would not be
>> welcomed in their home.
>> Despite my understanding the rigidity of their position, I later tried
>> my hand at being a Born Again Christian, baptized in the Holy spirit.
>> While I never again want to be so Perfect and so Totally self
>> righteous, I would not trade the experience for all the ticks and
>> tocks' in my Grandfather's Clock. Carl Jarvis
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/5/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>>> I just got out of bed a while ago and have spent some time at my morning
>>> ablutions and done some talking book listening and am now sitting down
>>> at the computer for the first time today. This is not the time of day
>>> that I usually deal with email, but I went to bed with a discussion from
>>> this list on my mind and I decided to elaborate on it while I still had
>>> it on my mind. Mostafa accused me of not knowing about so-called
>>> rational evidence. It was not that I didn't know about it. It was just
>>> that I considered it irrelevant to the discussion, so I ignored it at
>>> first. But let's look at what it is and why it was so irrelevant.
>>> Rational evidence is a legal concept and a theological concept. What it
>>> amounts to is that someone tells you something and that telling is
>>> accepted as evidence. In a court of law if someone states that he knows
>>> that an event happened because someone told him that it did that
>>> testimony is most often thrown out as being hearsay. It is also an
>>> example of so-called rational evidence. On the other hand, if the
>>> witness says that an event happened because he saw it happen then that
>>> testimony is usually accepted and added as evidence in the legal
>>> proceeding. It is called rational evidence because the witness has
>>> nothing to back it up, but the witness is presumed to be a rational
>>> witness. If, however, some independent evidence is found that shows the
>>> witness to be lying then that opens him up to charges of perjury and,
>>> possibly, obstruction of justice. Of course, the rational evidence must
>>> be credible to be accepted too. Now, let me say that I am willing to
>>> accept so-called rational evidence under certain circumstances. For
>>> example, suppose someone sends me an email in which he claims to be
>>> wearing white socks. I am specifying email because that takes my
>>> blindness out of it as possibly a failure to verify. No one can verify a
>>> claim if all they have is an email making the claim. Well, I would be
>>> inclined to believe that claim. Wearing white socks is a very, very,
>>> common thing to do. I would not have any reason to think the person
>>> making the claim had a motive to lie about it. If I did think of a
>>> credible reason that he might be lying, though, I would become more
>>> skeptical. But if I accept the claim I am still accepting a claim that
>>> has nothing to back it up and so so-called rational evidence has about
>>> as much to do with being rational as Ayn Rand's objectivism has to do
>>> with being objective. I think that is a good analogy because in both
>>> cases it works for specific claims, but as a general principle for
>>> acquiring knowledge they are both worthless. Now, let's look at Carl
>>> Sagan's admonition that fantastic claims require fantastic evidence.
>>> That concept was also embodied in he Isaac Asimov quote I was using as
>>> my signature line last month. I may accept the claim that a person is
>>> wearing white socks on nothing but his word because that is not a
>>> fantastic claim in the least, but if the same person claims that there
>>> is an invisible man in the sky with magical powers who made me then that
>>> claim is a lot harder for me to accept on the person's word. It is a
>>> very fantastic claim and it requires evidence from the person making the
>>> claim. And because it is a fantastic claim it requires really fantastic
>>> evidence too. What kind of evidence does it require? Well, Mostafa was
>>> dismissing the validity of empirical evidence, but it is a part of what
>>> would be called scientific evidence. By the way, empiricism is a branch
>>> of materialist philosophy that can be discussed separately. I mention it
>>> now because I thought it likely that the word empirical might bring that
>>> up, but it is not particularly relevant to what I am discussing right
>>> now. Empirical evidence is pretty much the same thing as data. That is,
>>> everyone can look at it and agree that it is real except for some wack
>>> jobs who would deny the existence of a brick wall if they were slammed
>>> against it, that is, religious types. Scientific evidence means that
>>> scientific method has been applied to the empirical evidence. That is,
>>> it is hypothesized that if certain things are done to the empirically
>>> derived data that certain things will happen and then these things are
>>> done to it - that is, an experiment - and the hypothesis is either
>>> verified or refuted by the outcome. Somehow Mostafa thinks that
>>> so-called rational evidence is more reliable than either empirical or
>>> scientific evidence. That is, if someone tells him that Muhammad, peas
>>> and carrots be upon him, rode through the sky on a flying horse he will
>>> accept that over any scientific studies on aerodynamics or biology. He
>>> also gets to pick and choose. He will accept utterly ridiculous claims
>>> like that, but if I make a claim that is just as much an example of
>>> so-called rational evidence he will reject it. It is also a bit ironic
>>> that the person who believes in the flying horse would say that I am the
>>> one who belongs in a mental hospital.
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>>
>>> J.K. Rowling
>>> " I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for
>>> believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist! "
>>> ― J.K. Rowling
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
No comments:
Post a Comment