Apple II and God (was Re: Notice to Scott Gamon)

[amitai.schlair@usa.net (Amitai Schlair)]

Toby Reiter <treiter@cs.oberlin.edu> wrote:

> On 3 Jun 1997, Nathan Mates wrote:
> 
> >    Scott- if you can't think to make sure you're speaking the facts,
> > and all of them, then please be quiet until you learn to do so.
> 
> Nathan, you are REALLY annoying me now.  There is no reason on earth that
> you should HURT the Apple II community just because you can't live with
> the fact that there are other reasons for speaking with another human being
> that giving them "facts".  

There are indeed other reasons for interaction. (For example, your post
was mostly opinion and not a whole lot of fact.) However, these reasons
are of questionable merit and minimal usefulness.

> 
> In fact, it amazes me that a person who is as religious as you seem to be
> (from looking at you web page) should have such a literal interpretation
> of knowledge. How can you balance your deep-set Christianity with your
> obsession with empirical evidence? Empirical evidence would seem to push
> anyone away from, for instance, a biblical understanding of history.
> However, a non-literal interpretation of the bible would allow one to do
> so. I can't see how a person who refuses to see anything other than
> black-and-white could possibly use such an interpretation.

There is definitely a contradiction here. I won't go into it other than
to say that religion and adherence to facts are fundamentally
incompatible. Whether one follows a strict or liberal interpretation of
the Bible, one is still following the Bible.

> 
> > <*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
> > # What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
> > # Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
> > # think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A.
> > # Heinlein
> 
> This quotation just about sums up some of the problems inherent to your
> belief system. "Shun wishful thinking?" If there had never been wishful
> thinking, there wouldn't be a wheel, let alone Apple II computers.
> Obviously opinion has greater importance than fact--it doesn't matter if
> the world is round if no one believes it! What the neighbors think will
> have a great deal of influence--they could elect a politician, even if
> he's not the best candidate, or choose a computer system, even if it's not
> better quality (witness the world's use of MS-DOS, Windows, etc. over
> Apple II's).  

Wrong. People who don't know the world is round wouldn't be able to make
a rocket orbit properly. (They wouldn't think to send a projectile
around a flat object!) People who do know the world is round, but not
with what radius, could get it in the air but wouldn't get it to reach a
circular orbit. People who know the radius can do it well. Facts matter.

I read somewhere a very interesting point: most of us in today's society
have no empirical evidence for believing that the world is round.
(There's that picture of Earth in the science textbook, but who's to say
it's really Earth? etc.) This is indeed true. However, physics makes
enough sense to me to justify the belief (opinion, in my case) that the
world is round.

> 
> I don't believe there actually are any absolute truths, and even if they
> did exist, their importance to humanity would not be based upon the extent
> to which they were true.  Rather, they would be important to the extent
> that a belief in that "truth" was valuable to the person who believed in
> it.  This is what makes faith significant.

You've probably heard this before... what you say (that there are no
absolute truths) implies that there is at least one, by virtue of your
generalization on the subject. But that's insignificant really.

On the other hand, you're saying that one's definition of reality exists
for the purpose of validating (or creating) a value system? That makes
for a nutty lens on life.

> 
> Anyway, I hate cluttering up an Apple II newsgroup with philosophy, but I
> really think it's time you, and others thought about the true reasons why
> we are all here: because we love the Apple II and _believe_ it can be a
> great computer.
> 
> Thanks,
> Toby Reiter

I'd like to point out that, whatever his religious feelings, Nathan is
right about facts. They are elemental to a modern society. If we want to
regress to the age of the caveman, the way to get there is to start
substituting desires for truths. This does not preclude "wishful
thinking," but rather recategorizes it as "not yet true." (The idea is
that wishing does not immediately make it so, but volition applied over
time does.)

-- 
Amitai Schlair
amitai.schlair@usa.net
--