In article <475### [at] hotmailcom>, a_l### [at] hotmailcom 
says...
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> > Patrick Elliott wrote:
> >> In article <4753d58b@news.povray.org>, Sabrina Kilian <"ykgp at 
> >> vtSPAM.edu"> says...
> >>> Atheists can fall into the same trap, the difference being that the
> >>> perceived sin is a lack of scientific reasoning. I forget if it was
> >>> Dawkins or someone else who made a statement that amounted to religio
n
> >>> being a genetic hold over or even a mental illness.
> >>>
> >> Just for the sake of argument, show me any case where blind faith that
 
> >> something is true has every turned out to be right,
> > 
> > That I like pizza and* sushi, but not both at the same time. I've never
> > actually tried both at once, but I'm pretty willing to bet that I would
> > not enjoy it.
> > 
> > *technically, xor. But this is the English language.
> > 
> >> save by pure 
> >> accident, and more to the point, how any other case has *not* been bas
ed 
> >> on seeing evidence, forming a theory based on that evidence, and then
 
> >> testing, in some fashion, if that conclusion was *actually* correct, o
r 
> >> needed modification... We start out with science, experimenting with o
ur 
> >> world and figuring out what works and doesn't work, and forming 
> >> **justified** opinions about why and how. Then, about the point where 
we 
> >> start talking people start telling us that some things are better 
> >> explained by the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Jesus. I can't imagine
 
> >> *why* atheists would think scientific thinking was the corner stone of
 
> >> rational thought... Snort!
> Patrick, you completely lost me there.
> >>
> > 
How so. Its basic cognitive development. We start out trying to touch 
everything, to figure out what it is, and how to use our limbs. We then 
progress to levels of understanding of complex associations, like that 
an object is the "same" object if it passes behind something, and that 
it didn't just teleport to get there. And so on. Nothing we do, unless 
we just blindly accept it from someone else's statements, is derived in 
any other way than via trying it, figuring out if it worked, then 
explaining why based on a) observation of the result and b) past 
experiments.

Faith derails this, in that it insists that a thing it true, just 
because someone *says* so. The only faith in science might be that you 
could, if you had the right tools, test anything it claims, and see if 
it *does* work as advertised. But, that isn't "blind faith", its 
justified faith. Religions tend to reject the later, and insist that the 
former is not only the only *true* means to enlightenment, but that 
blind faith is automatically more trust worthy.

Your pizza example isn't really valid, since I am sure you have 
justifications for thinking that you wouldn't like the combination, so 
its not *blind* in any shape or form, its based on past experience and a 
projection of the likely outcome. Blind faith tells you what an outcome 
*must* be, then demands that you not only reject evidence of the 
contrary position, but also implies that the very idea that you might 
test it, or seek evidence is invalid, by definition, since it would no 
longer, at that point, be *blind*.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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