from International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 15 - January 1994
See Home Page at http://www.ivymag.org

...the Dianasis debate - 6

Ray Harman, Australia

Goals and Purposes

I first read the Axioms over thirty years ago. People have tried at
times since then to help me understand Axiom Four, but I've never
really cognited on what it is supposed to mean. How can something
inanimate like a dimension point have a viewpoint, which is a theta
attribute? But I don't complain about Axiom Four or say it's wrong
or silly. Apparently other people can make sense of it, so I accept
that, and think that maybe one day it will make sense to me also.

Now, the contentious Axiom 0, I thought about it for a while and then
smiled quietly to myself. Yes, I thought, that seems reasonable. It
sort of validates me.

Maybe it could be seen by some as presumptive by Irene to put it at
the head of the Axioms, but it is after all a pretty basic sort of
statement!

If one's goals and purposes are to create a technology to allow escape
from the birth-death-birth merry-go-round, from the domination of
the MEST universe, to walk on water if you like, then bickering about
the rightness or wrongness of Axiom 0 is unlikely to help in achieving
them. The CofS hasn't achieved such goals, by the way, so we must
be willing to look beyond Sci tech in order to reach the ultimate
goals.

There was an old Sci teaching about Sci data. We used to be told,
if it's true for you, then it's true for you. If it's not true for
you, just pigeonhole it until it is true.

Let's keep our goals and purposes in front of us!





Fri Jul 21 18:49:30 EDT 2006