(November 8, 2014 at 5:44 pm)lweisenthal Wrote: 2. Certitude is poison, among both theists and atheists. Theistic certitude leads to sharia law type thinking. Atheistic certitude leads to intolerance of theists (e.g. the Soviet Union) and loss of potential personal benefits associated with theism.I notice that in this paragraph you specify a specific application of certitude (regarding the existence or non-existence of god). I take it that your claim that "certitude is poison" is therefore a general view? Because the converse would appear to be that uncertainty is thus the 'correct' approach, and I don't agree with that.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
