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From: David E. Weldon, Ph.D. <David.E.Weldon@DaytonOH.ATTGIS.COM>
Subject: Re: New Physics Curriculum
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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 21:21:52 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:28343 comp.ai.philosophy:26153


@==========Adam Heath Clark, 3/19/95==========
@
@followups trimmed
@
@Lawson English (english@primenet.com) wrote:
@: Adam Heath Clark (rubble@leland.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
@
@: : If 10,000 year old cosmologies born of ignorance, with little 
@coherence 
@: : and no evidence but the say-so of people who claim to "know," 
@are ever 
@: : validated by hard-nosed scientific inquiry, I will sit on any 
@pinnacle 
@: : you so desire.
@: : --
@
@: Oh, you mean like the ancient Aryan/Dravidian theory that says 
@that the 
@: universe created itself out of its own observation of itself?
@
@: And that this observation was actually a mistake 
@(supersymetry-breaking) 
@: as there was actually no distinctions extant to observe in the first 
@place?
@
@: Now, lessee, I know that I had a pinnacle around here 
@someplace...
@
@This sounds interesting, although I would bet that there's more to 
@the
@cosmology than this.  Wasn't this a precursor to Hinduism?  Does 
@it
@have anything like that multitude of gods?  What did it say about 
@the
@nature of the universe?  ("Observation" has very anthropomorphic
@connotations.)
@
@I guess my point is, I would consider Genesis by itself to be an 
@arguable cosmology, but Christians' insistence on taking it and
@all its trappings (particularly that Yahweh character) as literal
@constructs of the external universe makes Christianity as a whole
@an (imho) indefensible cosmology.  I regard religion as true but
@metaphorical, and although certain ideas in religion resemble
@certain ideas about the empirical universe, I have yet to be
@convinced that 'religion' and 'the empirical universe' have 
@anything
@to do with each other.  
@--
@- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
@Adam Clark                           One of these days, I'm going
@rubble@leland.stanford.edu           to cut you into little pieces...
@- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
@
Two small observations about your post:
1.  Christianity is not a religion in the sense you mean.  All religions are
statements about man's relationship to God, from man's perspective.  Only
Christianity and Judaism discuss the relationship from God's perspective.  In
addition, Christian doctrine focuses on the relationship and how to restore
it--not by works, but by God's grace and faith...lest any man should boast.

2.  Except for the modern era, the greatest scientists in western culture were
Christians.  Furthermore, they drew all of their hypotheses about the physical
universe from their understanding of God andHis relationship to His creation. 
Without the Judeo-Christian tradition, science as we know it would not exist. 
All other religions, including the Greek rationalists, view the world as
chaotic and capricious; Only Judeo-Christian doctrine viewed God's creation as
good, therefore orderly and lawful, and therefore capable of being studied.
Finally, these scientists used the Bible as the major source of their
hypotheses and theories.  So even if everything in the Bible is fiction, our
understanding of our world in large part is determined by its worldview.

