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Wayne et. al.<BR>
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Wayne wrote:<BR>
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Since neither Dale nor his analogues of various persuasions all over the world (and maybe elsewhere in the universe) can produce any verifiable proof of the correctness of their superstitions, many of us will not accept the imposition of the values dictated solely by those superstitious beliefs but will continue to rely on observation and testing. <BR>
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Ted replies:<BR>
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OK, Wayne, fair enough. Now I ask you to apply your standards of observation and testing and provide verifiable proof of the truth of the following statement regarded by many as the foundation of American Democracy:</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#99ccff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #99ccff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
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"</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#99ccff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #99ccff" SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."<BR>
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If you can provide verifiable proof based on observation and testing of the truth of this statement (skip the "endowed by their Creator" reference because I do not want to focus on debating whether "God" exists or not, but to focus on the basic idea of "unalienable Rights," assuming such a concept has any validity when not derived from theological foundations), I nominate you for the Nobel Prize for an astonishing breakthrough in the development of Ethical thought. Some of the greatest thinkers in history have admitted such Ethical statements as the one above that we use as moral guidelines all the time cannot be "proved" in the sense in which we think of logical principles or empirical statements of fact being "proved."</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#99ccff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #99ccff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
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Perhaps we should back up and ask what the notion of an "unalienable Right" is? If we do not have a clear truthful idea of this concept, then all debate about "right" and "wrong" is dust in the wind. We would therefore have no ethical basis to say, for example, that slavery is wrong.<BR>
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Personally I think that from the point of view of "proof" of Ethical statements we are in a fix. The universe is vastly unconcerned with whether we exist or not, the birth and evolution of the universe not being altered one bit by whether life exists or not! We think we are so important, but if our sun was of the sort that could supernova, earth and all life on it could be gone in a second, and the universe would not even blink.<BR>
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Physics is the ultimate science, and as such is concerned with principles of the behavior of matter, principles governing almost everything happening in the universe, that provide us with no ethical backing whatsoever to justify our grand "unalienable Rights."<BR>
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Sorry to be so gloomy, but this is an attempt to face the truth. No fairy tales here!<BR>
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I'll save those for later. After all, our creativity as a species to create worlds of wonder, beauty and love is based on the human dimension of our minds to endow our lives with the qualities we think are the best expressions of our being, our spirit. But there are no "proofs" we choose the best path, except to say, in the final analysis, "Love feels better than hate" or "Beauty is more enjoyable than ugliness." Such statements do have factual basis in our feelings, but still some people enjoy hate more than love, and ugliness more than beauty. I do not know of any proofs to prove them wrong, except to say, "your feelings are not sufficiently developed or are somehow amiss, like a person who has jaundice seeing yellow when most of us see other colors."<BR>
This approach also has problems.<BR>
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I suspect we will keep arguing and fighting over these questions for millennia!<BR>
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Ted Moffett<BR>
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