Christian Perspectives on Peak Oil

greenworm · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 27, 2006 Posts: 1342

Actually it is evidence, I have asked so many Christian in my life time, whether or not they have touched, seen, or heard and not one of them has answered yes. Not belief, man. I am very data oriented, trust me. One even said, "No, but how can you deny God, the planets wouldn't revolve the way they do without him, he has created an ordered universe." And that is where I said, your causality assumptions are ridiculous and the universe is not such a nicely ordered place, read some kepler.

greenworm · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 27, 2006 Posts: 1342

Well, send the monk my way, I'll put him under the lie detector test.

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Fri May 16, 2008 2:24 pm; edited 1 time in total

double
_________________
only the paranoid survive

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Fri May 16, 2008 2:38 pm; edited 2 times in total

btu2012

lper100km

That monk has transmuted into a red herring!

btu2012

BigTex

Greenworm and Gandalf stand at opposite ends of the spectrum, each equally dogmatic in his view, each equally certain he is correct.

What is interesting is that although I have no idea what the truth is, I know that it is extraordinarily likely that one of them is wrong and there is a fair chance that they are both wrong about what they are decribing in absolute terms.

It's not often that you get such nicely packaged dogmas to compare.

Greenworm, there are so many holes that can be poked in your reasoning, I am surprised you don't see them. It is not necessary that I be right in order to show that your analysis cannot be correct as you are describing it.

You describe "facts" as if they were these objective bits of absolute meaning out in the ether, and it is only a matter of catching them in your net of rationality and showing them to us to build an irrefutable case for your position.

If the goal is to convince yourself of something, that method works fine, but if your goal is to convince someone else of the same thing, only a weak-minded person would let themselves be deluded in this manner.

Among the questions I would have:

1. How was the methodology developed for gathering the facts?

2. How are you sure you gathered all of the relevant facts?

3. What protections did you put in place against currently unknown facts that might alter the outcome?

4. What allowance have you made for your own biases in gathering the facts?

5. When analyzing the facts, how many different methodologies were used? Who decided which ones would be used?

6. When deciding which conclusions followed from an analysis of the facts, what was the methodology used to distinguish between supportable conclusions and interpretations and inferences based upon those conclusions?

7. No matter how rigorous the process was that led to the conclusions, can the conclusions ever be stated as "facts", or do they remain conclusions that are subject to revision and refinement based upon new information and errors that are discovered later?

8. Given that the human senses are inherently subjective, how can you be certain that any of what you characterize as facts are, indeed, facts, as opposed to a well intentioned and rational interpretation of something whose objective nature simply can't be understood by subjective perceptions?

Do you see the tyranny in your approach? Do you see the narrowmindedness of presuming that what is true in your eyes MUST be true in everyone's eyes?

More importantly, do you see that to the extent that you dismiss the views of others, you should have no expectation that they are not going to dismiss your views as well? If you know that your approach is only going to lead to your views being dismissed, why bother making the arguments?
_________________
Smile

vision-master

Buddha say's walk in the middle of the road. Razz

btu2012