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To: laredo44
Hardly. 2+2=4. With or without God. False premises yield garbage results.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Facts are not values. Is the fact 2+2=4 an "evil" fact? Use your head, laredo.

387 posted on 03/04/2003 7:53:09 AM PST by HumanaeVitae
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To: HumanaeVitae
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Facts are not values. Is the fact 2+2=4 an "evil" fact? Use your head, laredo.

I disagree. 2+2=4 is more closely an assumption than anything else. All of mathematics is based on assumptions called axioms or postualtes. Acceptance of them is a belief and by definition, not proved. Very similar to a belief in God.

You are free to disagree with any or all assumptions. You are free to base a mathematics on the equivalent of 2+2=5 if you like, and you are free to use conclusions based on that in your architecture, medicine, physics, etc. I doubt you'll have much of a successful civilization.

Mathematicians don't expend effort proving things like, "Given a line and a point not on the line, there is one and only one line containing the point and perpendicular to the given line." This is a belief, not a fact. It is a basis for Euclidean geometry. You are free to reject it. You are free to reject all of Euclidean geometry derived from that postulate. But it is just a belief.

I state this because I see too much nonsense going unrefuted about how, without God, one opinion is just as good as another. All opinions are not equal. It is time to stop saying, implying, and inferring that they are.

This appears to me to be an attempt by some to assert that their belief in God places them in a position to judge what is moral/right/good, and the rest of us are nothing more than wanderers in the wilderness. Nonsense and rubbish!

403 posted on 03/04/2003 10:23:46 AM PST by laredo44
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