debitage
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 13.7.02
I think that if some evangelical/fundamentalist asks me if I've accepted Jesus as my personal savior, I can say "yes, but that doesn't mean what you think it means." I think the key word here is "personal." To say that Jesus is one's personal savior is to say that the New Testament Jesus-mythos in some way speaks powerfully to you in your particular context. And that implies that there are other traditions, other spiritual paths (including a non-spiritual outlook) that could also speak to a person in a powerful way. Different contexts require different messages. To say that everyone should have Jesus as their savior, or even to tell one person that, is to destroy the personal nature of his savior-hood. It becomes a depersonalized, one-size-fits-all approach. And in not being tailored to particular people in particular situations, it loses its deep connection to the person -- and therefore its salvific power. To be a savior, Jesus must be personal. And to be personal, he can't be universal.
12.7.02
Today I went over to his desk and peeked at the backside. It was a tourist ad for Wales, with a "our scenery is so breathtaking it will make you believe God must have created it" theme.
11.7.02
In most languages' system of pronouns, there are six basic forms -- the three persons, each with a singular and plural form. There may be some other divisions as well (often in the third person -- hän for people and se for non-people in Finnish, for example, or él and ella for masculine and feminine in Spanish). But some languages don't have the typical singular/plural divide -- ancient Greek has a little-known "dual" form, and highland Nepalese languages also have it, while I'm told Japanese has no plurals. And when you think about it, why if the difference between 1 and 2 so important as compared to 2 vs 3, or 40 vs 41? Then there's the interesting divide made by Quechua in the first person plural -- noqancheq if it includes the person being spoken to, and noqayku if it doesn't. It seems like a more logical system would cover all the permutations of the three possible parties to a communication -- 1. the speaker(s), 2. the listener(s), and 3. other person(s). So by this system, the pronouns would cover: 1, 1+2, 1+3, 1+2+3, 2, 2+3, 3. Or, in words: "just me," "me and you," "me and someone else," "me and you and someone else," "you," "you and someone else," and "someone else." A seven-slot system to replace the popular six-slot-with-modifications system.
Religion lays a claim to absolute truth. The word of the Bible, or the Avesta, or the oral tradition of the Pitjantjatjara people, is the final word on every subject it addresses. These truths are revealed from an ultimate source -- God, or someone similar -- that necessarily knows the full truth. Science, on the other hand, can lay no claim to absoluteness. Science is the best explanation we can think of for the data we have. More data, or more insightful syntheses of the current data, will lead to different explanations of the world. Ideally, this would lead to a closer and closer approximation of the truth, though there are huge cultural factors affecting which data we use and what kind of explanations we think of. But creationists seem to treat science as a religion. In part this probably springs from the apparent conflict of evolution with their religious belief, leading them to relativist arguments about "telling both sides" and thus equivalence between the two systems. But it also comes from not seeing how a scientific approach to the truth differs from a religious one. A scientist would cite the adaptability of scientific explanation -- the willingness of the scientific community to adapt its theories win the face of contradictory evidence -- as a strength. Science thrives on finding increasingly better explanations. But creationists cite it as a weakness. They dismiss evolution as "just a theory," when scientific explanations are always just theories, no matter how well supported (and to a naturalistic or Kantian perspective, theories are all we can ever have about anything). They view each scientific theory as a religious truth, an absolute and final answer, which will bring down its whole intellectual edifice if it is undermined (much as they see their belief in God being challenged by revision of the Genesis story). Most of the creationist letters told us simply "read the Bible, the answers are in there." There is a revealed truth, they say, which is final and absolute and has been available all along. Provisional explanations, things we believe "to the best of our knowledge," have no place when you believe there is an absolute truth accessible.
9.7.02
An interesting point made at the very end of a long article that was big on flowery language and short on solid reporting.
I don't see how this would reestablish the thylacine species, though. There would be no genetic variability in the population if they're all cloned from the same pickled baby. Lions are already having that problem, but they can't artificially inseminate a thylacine.
8.7.02
I think the point can be extended to other arenas, but I'll take as my starting point physical attractiveness, since that was Fort's example. I've never quite understood how people can describe their idea of a beautiful person in terms of specific characteristics -- this height, this color hair, this sort of nose, etc. If I think of a particular person who I consider attractive, I can't capture that attractiveness with a catalogue of characteristics, any more than you can describe a novel by listing the words that are in it. It's not the parts, it's how the parts fit together. It's not this shape of nose and this color hair, it's how this shape of nose and that color hair complement each other. It's not the word "brooding," it's the word "brooding" used to describe that character at this point of the story. Context. |
I got one of those exhilarating feelings of having a sort of intellectual breakthrough today. Not a sort of "Eureka!" where I had the answer, but more a feeling of having the materials in my head to put together something meaningful. I had to go to the Italian dinner at the house soon after, so through the whole meal (one of the best I've ever had, incidentally) my mind was swirling and keeping me from concentrating. I still haven't put everything together, and it may be that my thoughts turn out to be incomplete or nonsensical. I don't know if I'll write everything here -- I feel much freer to critique things than to affirm them in a public forum. I may work things out privately, then let elements show through here. And it may be that I'm totally overbilling the significance of what will come. I'll start with one thing that I seem to have a somewhat better grasp on.