Posted by Illuminati on 6/4/2005, 10:21 am, in reply to "The principle of Correlation" The principle of uniformity can be tested for immense periods of times by astronomers who are also looking into the past when they look into the distant reaches of the universe. Astronomers have found that the laws of physics are indeed quite uniform throughout time although recently in Scientific American June 2005 issue the question is raised whether the universal constants may have been different close to the time of the creation of the universe. If this is the case then even the laws of physics have changed and the theory of uniformity will have to be modified. This will also call for a reevaluation of cosmology which is based on unifomitarianism. On the other hand the same article confirms that the change was only evident in the early part of creation and doesn't affect present physics whatsoever. Unfortunately, the principle of analogy seems to go much farther than the legitimate principle of uniformity in physical sciences. If taken to it's logical conclusion, each person can apply only his own experience in formulating his belief system. This is completely alien to scientific inquiry or human advancement. Science is based on the joint cooperative achievements of many people who share their individual experiences and knowledge to arrive at conclusions concerning reality. No one person lives long enough to have all the experiences or knowledge necessary to arrive at scientific conclusions or to form a coherent cosmology. Even the intellectual giant, Einstein, had to collaborate with a mathematician to produce his general theory of relativity. Einstein didn't have the knowledge to perform the computations alone. The idea that anyone has the personal knowledge or experience to arrive at truth alone is a myth. The more human knowledge advances the more impossible this becomes. Not only must we rely on other people's current experiences to reach a correct understanding of the world, but we must also rely on people's experiences in the past. All research upon which we rely today for scientific truth was done in the past. By the time a scientist records his data and organizes it into a paper for publication, his research is already history. We believe if we redid the research, it would give the same results and indeed other scientists will usually perform similar experiments to verify the research. Once that has been done, science moves on. Scientists don't continually recheck the data daily for every experiment that has ever been done but instead must rely on the past work of previous scientists. As I stated, the Principle of Analogy has some legitimate similarities to the principle of uniformitarianism. For example, when one reads in ancient genealogies that individuals lived 800 or 900 years one should question whether this information is accurate or if possibly the genealogy is based on faulty information. We certainly don't find humans today living to those great ages. Furthermore, when we study ancient mummies from thousands of years ago, we find they are very similar to us with similar anatomy and similar types of illness. Our belief in a holy book should not compel us to take untenable intellectual positions. On the other hand, there is no philosophical or scientific reason why God can not intervene in spectacular ways in history. As I noted in my previous post, anytime an individual performs an act of freedom, this is a miracle unexplainable by science. The principle of uniformitarianism does not apply to and can not explain creative acts of genius. For example, there is a savant in England who can perform stupendous acts of mathematical calculation in his head almost instantly by visualizing numbers as shapes. How does he do it? No one knows, not even he can explain it. The answers just mysteriously come to him. The only way we can understand the transcendent nature of reality is by accepting and learning the intellectual lessons of based on the observations of others recorded in history. We can not logically reject the observations of others just because they lived in the past but and tell stories which we find amazing but must evaluate their information carefully to determine whether it has been transmitted correctly and whether they were in a position to know and tell the truth. We can not automatically reject it if it transcends our own personal experience. This applies to miracles in general but specifically to Jesus' greatest miracle, His death and resurrection. This was a public event witnessed by many people who knew Him well including His enemies and friends. That His tomb was found empty 3 days later was also not disputed. The precise events which occurred at the resurrection are not clear since events at that time were quite chaotic and totally unexpected. Each person would have a slightly different memory about the event. None the less, the tomb was empty and many people reported they had actually talked to Him. Indeed many of these people were so certain of their experience they suffered torture and death rather than to renounce this event. Jesus death was reported not only by His followers but was confirmed by the Roman historians and by His Jewish enemies. The implications of this event are so profound that the human mind wants to reject it instantly. Those who don't want to believe and follow Jesus' teachings of love will go to great lengths to reject and discredit the evidence. For instance, Muhammad clearly knew he could never match the miracle of Jesus' resurrection. Indeed history has confirmed he did not match Jesus' miracle, Muhammad still lies dead in his tomb to this very day a moldering corpse. Since Muhammad could not match Jesus' greatest miracle, he took the only course open to someone who wishes to have honor greater than that given to Jesus, he denied Jesus' death on the cross ever happened. He made up a theory which is completely contrary to scriptures and claimed that prophets can not suffer or die in this way and therefore the one who actually died on the cross was Judas, not Jesus. By this act of self aggrandizement, Muhammad sealed the fate of his followers who were for ever afterwards unable to understand or benefit from Jesus' teachings of transcendent love. According to Jesus, the way to insure your place in paradise is to pour out your life in love and to suffer for others even to the point of death, not to by slowly sawing off enemies heads while crying Allu Akbar. Jesus teachings are to bear other people's infirmities not to blow up children with car bombs. While it is true that some people who claim to follow Jesus can match the Muslims in violence, no Muslim can match the best followers of Jesus in their loving deeds for others. The skeptical scholars who reject Jesus' teachings also have separated themselves from the possibility to understand His transcendent love. All that is left to the skeptic is the law of "survival of the fittest." Nature, "red in tooth and claw," rules where the weaker is legitimate prey to the powerful. In his book Mein Kampf Hitler explicitly stated that it was God's will that the stronger should prey on the weaker. It was for the good of the human species that the inferior should die out to cleanse the race of blood pollution. As Europe is again discovering, without Jesus' teachings of love and kindness, modern civilization is without any foundation and will quickly succumb to barbarism and totalitarianism. From this I'm led to the conclusion that while the principle of analogy has validity if applied judiciously to laws of physics, physiology and human nature it can not explain the acts of Divine creativity which transcend science. We should not be naive and accept every wondrous event the ancients recorded and we should not accept superstition. However, we should not arbitrarily reject historically validated events just because they transcend our own experiences and our own preconceptions. These is more to the universe than we yet know and we must be willing to accept possibility that there may be events recorded in history which are different than our everyday experience today.
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As I stated earlier in my introduction to the Historical-critical method of Bible study, the principle of analogy is somewhat similar to the principle of uniformitarianism in science. One of the great breakthroughs in science was the physics by Sir Isaac Newton who discovered that the laws of physics apply to heavenly bodies as well as on this earth. Based on this principle, scientists who study a natural law at one location expect the law to apply not only at other places in the universe but also at other times in the past and in the future.
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