[Sca-cooks] Faith and chellenges

Anne-Marie Rousseau dailleurs at liripipe.com
Tue May 30 14:54:05 PDT 2006


hey all from Anne-Marie

the same criteria could be put on pretty much any observation set. Conclusions are 
based on faith. some faith decisions have more supporting evidence than others. but 
if there's one thing science has taught me is that we dont know nuthin. we can 
guess (again, faith) and we can make educated guesses (still faith) but we never 
really know. 

Observations are facts. conclusions are explainations taht may or may not be right, 
and that are made based on interpretations of facts.

if I let go of this ball, it appears to go down.
does it? really? are you sure?
why? we say gravity.
gravity is the idea that magnetic and other vector forces exert a pull on all 
objects. we have math that if you plug in weights and velocities, you can figure a 
constant value that we call "gravity". 

it is also possible that it is merely an optical illusion. not likely, but 
possible. We ahve faith that our suppositions of "gravity" are true. and so we draw 
conclusions based on that.

I guess for me, wisdom is the ability to take in stride times when faith is 
required :)

as for what I mean when I say divine intervention, I'm an immunlogist, studing 
cancer and angiogenesis. the way the human body works is just too friggin neat. I 
choose to take that as evidence of a divine finger at the start that poked the 
start of the rube golberg device taht is evolution. 

the more observations and facts we gather, the more we realise we have no idea how 
these things came to be (a cell turns cancerous. macrophages come in and are anti 
tumor. until the tumor cell starts pumping out chemicals that turn the macrophage 
into a pro tumor support cell. ) we can guess and we can hypothesise, but in the 
end its all faith. faith that the observations are really what we think theya re, 
and faith that the systems are as we imagine.

>We learn from experimenting, critical analysis, speculation, testing, 
validation, open discussion, challenging our once-treasured beliefs, trying out new 
ideas and viewpoints, looking at trends, looking for connections -- and that's in 
cooking!  Why shouldn't the same ideas apply to religion?

and they do. even for us jesuit educated catholics :)

there's lots of kinds of faith in this world. some people have faith in the 
physical world. some people have faith in their fellow humans. some have faith in 
the Divine. I have faith in faith. :)

--AM, who also has faith that mustard and butter and capers and green onions are 
yummy when made into a sauce and put on veggies or meat or bread.



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