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Aswad -> RE: Pro-life Anti-Christian (11/1/2008 11:46:09 AM)
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Please tone it down, meatcleaver. Sticking to my inadequacies in using your language is fine; words like "juvenile" and "pretentious," however, need elaboration if I am to take them as something other than a poor attempt at being insulting. The former course of action will allow the conversation to continue; the latter will not.
And, yes, if you do want to address the distinction, an assumption is held more strongly than mere belief.
You could say that an assumption is a belief that is not doubted (with cultural convention and credibility determining the difference between that and zealotry), and which can derive from experiences that appear to support the assumption. That said, beliefs and assumptions are otherwise rather interchangeable as foundations for taking actions. Their soundness determines the outcome of that action.
It is possible for an engineer to proceed from a belief that a problem exists in a particular part of the system, when only a malfunction is in evidence; this is rather common when people know a system well. It is also possible to proceed from an assumption of the same, when something tells the engineer that the problem is definitely in that part of the system. And it is possible for him to be wrong or right, regardless of whether he proceeded from a belief or an assumption.
Similarly, it is possible for me to proceed from a belief that our capacity for reason constitutes a divine mandate- indeed, perhaps even an obligation- to employ this faculty, or from the assumption that it will lead to the greatest benefit to do so due to its predictive power, which has been honed through millenia of periodic selection pressure. Either way, the net result is the same, and therein lies part of my original thrust (I hope you don't mind inching back to the topic at hand), namely that it is possible to employ reason in determining, refining and applying one's religious beliefs and assumptions, as well as using it to check them against perceived reality.
If a person's religious beliefs include the notion that the world is a mere six millenia old, then it would need to account for observable evidence to the contrary in order to have any semblance of rationality to it. And if one subscribes to anything vaguely resembling Occam's Razor, then it is clear that there's a needless multiplicity involved in essentially any attempt to explain the discrepancy. Indeed, the rational choice would be to revise the religious belief to the effect that the world is millions of years old, and that a bunch of sheepherders got it wrong a long time ago.
Of course, there will always be people who reject the observable evidence, or refuse to employ their capacity for reason, and I would probably share your views on those people, if it weren't for the fact that I believe division of labor should be taken to include intellectual ability and social stratification, such that it's just neat that there are people around who can be controlled that easily. People who can be content with obedience and the daily grind. That just leaves hoping they find good leaders, with the capacity for reason, who recognize the observable evidence, and who are bent on some other goal than crusades, jihads and other such quibbles.
Regardless, whether people legislate from a secular set of beliefs and assumptions, rather than from a religious set of beliefs and assumptions, doesn't really make all that much of a difference, as humans are inherently the creators of morals and values anyway, making one set objectively equivalent to another, so long as the actions taken are congruent with the goals created.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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