On 10/18/2010 8:41 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> there is a marked difference between "still accepted" beliefs, and
>> those rejected as mythology.
>
> Which one of those examples do you think is not still accepted beliefs?
>
As far as I know, flying horses and golden plates are *not* in that 
category, which is what the later part of my posting relates to. My 
point being that, once the idea is no longer considered "modern", it 
becomes non-attributable to religion, and therefor rejected. The only 
difference therefor is whether or not someone still follows it, how 
many, and whether or not the person examining the entity in question is 
**aware** that someone still follows it. If these criteria are met, the 
theist invariably lumps such things into, "part of my mythology, but not 
what those other bozos imagine it is", with the only conclusions tending 
to be either that its for or against their position. The only real 
exception to this rule are people that have formal logic training, as 
applied to a specific branch of science, but still apply mis-logic to 
other propositions. In there case, someone pointed out, the issue 
becomes one of rigor. Tests, questions, skepticism, and application of 
careful examination of premises, get applied asymmetrically. When 
applied to their field of study, the number of allowed categories of 
evidence is highly narrow. When applied to faith, or even other fields 
of science, presuppositions, conclusions, and even evidence, which 
would, in their own field, have been rejected as absurd to the point of 
completely rejecting them on their most basic foundations, are not only 
accepted, but presented as evidence for the phenomena.

Sadly, this is not uncommon. However, many, including myself, have 
argued that you cannot have such a drastic error in thinking, and not 
have it spill over into your own discipline, either by creating barriers 
to examination, where questions are not asked, or risking running across 
evidence that could be applied to other things, which would, if so 
applied, logically contradict those other positions (and thus either 
undermine them, or undermine acceptance of the principles that led to 
the contradiction, and thus their own field of study).

I flat out do not believe that such a complete disparity in positions 
does not produce failures, albeit, often hard to find ones, in the 
thinking about the subject for which the ridiculous *is* readily 
rejected, if such quality substance is accepted in other venues.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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