[Buddha-l] Hindu Fundamentalism

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 10:38 -0400, curt wrote:

> The statement "there is no scientific evidence of Ram or Krishna"
> is true only in an extremely trivial sense. It is true only in so far as the
> statement "science is not able to contribute meaningfully to the question of
> whether or not deities exist" is also true. 

You find that trivial? Oddly enough, I find the claim that science has
no interest in claims that are not testable hypotheses a rather
important claim about what makes science significantly different from
religion and poetry.

> Since you admit that it is not possible to perform experiments to
> test for the existence of Deities - this means that science has nothing
> to say on the issue. 

Yes, exactly. Leave it to the poets and the preachers to speak of
deities. And leave it to people to decide how much attention they want
to give to poets and preachers. (In American society, about 85% of the
people pay attention to preachers and poets, while about 30% pay
attention to scientists. What I myself would prefer would be to have a
society in which 100% of the people paid attention to both scientists
and to poets. As for the preachers, I'm content to let most of them rot
in hell.)

> But to imply that science somehow does, in fact, have something to say
> - and that, in fact, science lends credence to the assertion that
> Deities do not exist - is both wrong and wrong-headed.

Yes, it would be wrong-headed if someone were to say that. But no one
has said that in this discussion. You keep trying to put that claim into
people's mouths, but in this ignoble task you have, fortunately, failed.

-- 
Richard Hayes