David, I agree with you. The "why" questions are imponderable, though.
We can make reasonable guesses as to our own motives and as to the
motives of others. But those guesses are themselves non-falsifiable and
prone to the lens of interpretation in which "my" view is always right
and correct and "yours" is misguided.
This is my point of view: There are two ways to approach "faith" as it
is commony defined...religion, superstition, conspiracy theory, paranormal
obsessions, hysterical anti-communism, fanatic patriotism, alien abduction,
etc. etc. etc.
The first is to assume they are a problem and ask "how do these viruses
infect us? How do they continue to propogate and how can we control
them?"
The second is to assume they are the products of evolution and thus serve
some adaptive purpose. Then you ask "what is this good for, how can we
us it, and how can we make it work for us in modern society".
The BEST view probably is ambigious, accepting both as true at the
same time. Faith is useful and faith is a kind of infection. Faith serves
us in some contexts and cripples us in others.
The REALISTIC view is to admit that we all live with a woefully
incomplete ontology...that each of us entertains a number of a priori
axioms of all the types (and more) you have described. Furthemore,
we have a tendency to see the axioms we hold as "reasonable assumptions"
and the axioms others hold (especially when they conflict with our own)
to be "blind faith".
Reed
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Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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