(December 10, 2014 at 1:31 pm)professor Wrote: Tonus, I usually forget this generation was indoctrinated in a concept of there being no objective truth.False dichotomy. Look, I realize it's much easier to believe in a delusion if you pretend that the only other choice is even worse, but that's not the reality of the situation. This isn't a choice between one person's experience and someone else's theory. It's a choice between what we are being asked to take on faith with what can and will be tested. The latter might be confirmed, modified, or even rejected as a result. The former cannot be confirmed or modified, and to the believer it is a mortal sin to reject it.
However, the person with an experience is not in the same category as one with merely a theory.
Drich put that very well in a recent post.
In other words, you were indoctrinated to believe that there are objective truths and told not to question them, lest you risk your eternal soul. The other guy questioned them and realized that they're a load of tripe. Your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and ask us to trust you. Sorry prof, but I'm with the other guy.
"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
