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re: Healthy agnosticism
Peter wrote:
> Heck, I think we see evidence of that sort of in-fighting (except it isn't
> "in-fighting" to the people who think that the other group belongs on the
> "outside") in Paul's epistles,
Oh, absolutely. The book of Acts tries to cover it up, a bit, but it's
*all* over the letter to the Galatians. And it's *exactly* this question
of "in-fighting" vs. "outside" that I was trying to get at with my
(admittedly) long-winded letter. With both sides claiming to be "in",
and no falsifiable test to be performed, how can you determine who is
"objectively right"?
> I am tempted to say, at least, that the *fact* of the resurrection is an
> essential part of Christianity, however one interprets it.
I would also be so tempted, but I would feel compelled to point out that it's a
long way from saying "a fact y is an essential part of x" to saying "x *is*
something universal, constant, and objective". I would further claim that
anything objective is by definition meaningless, since we impart meaning to
objective facts, rendering them subjective via an active and interactive
hermeneutical process we call understanding (and memory, for that matter). An
electron doesn't solve the schroedinger equation, calculating feynman path
integrals, to determine where to go: it *does* what it *does*. We create the
description of that objective fact, which in turn gives it meaning: i.e. a
descriptive abstraction (in the Hegelian sense of extracting a part to stand
for the whole) within a contextual framework that imparts predicitive power.
Knowing what something means has implications for past and future, while
an objective fact only exists in its present.
I will see Memento as soon as I get the chance. And dude, you still have
to read _Flicker_!
Hermeneutically yours,
--
Don Smith Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/
"Go to red alert!" "Are you *absolutely* sure, sir?
It does mean changing the bulb." - Red Dwarf
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