Since Birds of a Feather
Flock Together, I would fly with....
a.
William of Ockham
In his writings, Ockham stressed
the principle that "entitites must not be multiplied
beyond what is necessary." This principle became known as Ockham's
Razor. In philosophy, a problem should be stated in its basic and simplest
terms. In science, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem
is the one that should be selected.
Thus, QBaal advises
the young-earth creationists to abandon variable speed light to account
for 12 billion year old light reaching a ten thousand year
old earth (created according to young earth creationists about the
same time the universe and light were first created).
QBaal's mommy told
him long ago "Keep it simple, ..."
So I did and immediately
realized that Genesis 1 is purely and
simply a creation
myth.
b.
Wm. Shakespeare
O, what a tangled web
we weave,/
When first we practise to deceive!
c. Michel Montaigne
He who is not sure of his memory should not
undertake the trade of lying.
d.
Ken Miller
"I knew a nun while
I was a graduate student in Colorado," he said, "who was also a biologist.
She gave a lecture on evolution, which she fully accepted, and was asked
during the question period how she could believe in a God who created through
evolution. How did that fit with her theology?"
"Well, she replied,"
Ken continued, "that it sounded to her like the questioner believed in
a God who wasn't a really superlative pool player. Imagine a pool player
who says, 'I'm going to sink all the balls on the table,' and he does so
- but only one at a time. 'My God,' said the nun, 'is like the pool player
who lifts the triangular rack on the 15 balls, lines up the cue ball, and
sinks all the balls with one shot.'"
"And that's my God,
too," said Ken (biology professor).
Miller elabortion
e. Marcus Borg
In our time (2000),
this stage is intensified and is often prolonged by the modern identification
of truth with factuality. To use language I used in chapter 1, skeptics
and biblical literalists alike in the modern world are often "fact fundamentalists":
if something didn't happen, it isn't true.
Although the progression
from practical naivete to critical thinking is virtually automatic, moving
beyond the skepticism of a critical mode of thinking wedded to the modern
world view is not. Many people get stuck in this stage, sometimes for their
whole lives.
It is the ability
to affirm, in words I have often quoted from a Native American storyteller,
"I don't know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is
true." It is the ability to hear the Christmas
stories once again
as true stories, as we did when we were children, even as we know that
they are almost certainly not historical
narratives.
As T.S. Eliot wrote:
And the end of all
our exploring
Will be to arrive
where we started
And know the place
for the first time.
Without using
the phrase earlier in this book, I have
already provided many examples of reading the
gospels in a state of post-critical naivete. Among
them are the Christmas stories, just mentioned and treated more fully in
chapter 12. Reading the community's interpretation of the death and resurrection
of Jesus in the ways I suggest in chapter 8 provides another example. So
also the Emmaus Road story: I hear it as a true story, though I do not
think that it reports a particular event on a particular afternoon.
Marcus Borg The Meaning
of Jesus p.248
Publisher HarperSanFrancisco
(full document)
Folk
I don't Want Flocking with Me...
a.
Fanatical Supporters of Ancient
Ptolemaic Mental Constructs
The
Greek astronomer Ptolemy (AD 100's) said that the planets moved in small
circles called epicyles. The epicycles moved in large circles call
deferents. Earth was near the center of all the deferents.
b.
The writer of Matthew 27:25
And all the
people answered, "His blood be on us and on our
childen."
c.
Proponents of Philosophical Materialism
... It is not that
the methods and institutions of science
somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of
the phenomenal world, but, on the contary, that we are
forced by our a priori adherence to material causes
to creat an apparatus
of investigation and set of
concepts that produce material explanations, no matter
how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the
uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for
we
cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
..Rather, the problem
is to get the public to reject
irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the
demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to
accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as
the only begetter of truth.
Richard Lewontin,
review of Carl SaganThe Demon-Haunted World