p199
Operationally well-defined correspondence
What is stated here is quite different from the so-called “operationalism.” Here what is asserted is that something can be incorporated into science unambiguously only when its aspect relevant to science is observed by a certain actual operation that can be clearly stated. As is clear from the criticism of the so-called operationalism, to define ‘operation’ is not an easy task, so just as ‘rigor’ or ‘science’ what ‘clear operational characterization’ implies cannot be formally specified. However, needless to say, this does not mean imposing this requirement is meaningless.
Footnote 21 Addendum Biology and women
The contribution of women to natural history is not at all small. For example, one of the pioneers who clearly recognize that lichens are symbiotic communities of algae and fungi was Beatrix Potter, who is famous for her Peter Rabbit series. Deuterostomia was recognized first by Libby Hyman. Her six-volumed The Invertebrates is a masterpiece that should be reprinted. See http://www.answers.com/topic/libbie-hyman . Her slightly longer biography is Rose M. Morgan: Libby Heinrietta Hyman, eminent invertebrate zoologist, American Biology Teachers 60 , 251 (1998).
An interesting related topic is:
New et al., Spatial adaptations for plant foraging: women excel and calories count
Proc Roy Soc 274, 2679 (2007)
The experimental method is worth reading.
Chapter 17. Converting the missionary
p263
SIL missionaries do not preach or baptize, They avoid pastor-like roles. Rather, SIL believes that the most effective way to evangelize indigenous peoples is to translate the New Testament into their language. Since SL also believes that the Bible is literally the word of God, then it is reasoned, the Bible should be able to speak for itself.
p265
This night, I decided to tell them something very personal about myself---something that I thought would make them understand how important God can be in our lives. So I told the Pirah¥~{a}s how my stepmother committed suicide and how this led me to Jesus and how my life got better after I stopped drinking and doing drugs and accepted Jesus. I told this as a very serious story.
When I concluded, the Pirah¥~{a}s burst into laughter. This was unexpected to put it mildly. I was used to reactions like ``Praise god!'' with my audience genuinely impressed by the great hardships I had been through and how God had pulled me out of them.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked.
“She killed herself? Ha ha ha. How stupid. Pirah¥~{a}s don't kill themselves,” they answered.
They were utterly unimpressed. It was clear to them that the fact that someone I have loved had committed suicide was no reason at all for the Pirah¥~{a}s to believe in my God. Indeed, it had the opposite effect, highlighting our differences.
“Hey Dan, what does Jesus look like? Is he dark like us or light like you?”
I said, “Well, I have never actually seen him. He lived a long time ago. But I do have his words.”
“Well, Dan, how do you have his words if you have never heard him or seen him?”
They then made it clear that if I had not actually seen this guy (and not in any metaphorical sense, but literally), they weren't interested in any stories I had to tell about him. Period. This is because, as I now know, the Pirah¥~{a}s believe only what they see. Sometimes they also believe in things that someone else has told them so long as that person has personally witnessed what he or she is reporting.
p268
The difficulty at the core of my reason for being among the Pirah¥~{a}s was that the message that I had staked my life and career on did not fit the Pirah¥~{a}s' culture. At the very least, one lesson to draw here was that my confidence in the universal appeal of the spiritual message I was bringing was ill-founded. The Pirah¥~{a}s were not in the market for a new worldview.
From the first record of contact with the Pirah¥~{a}s and the Muras, a closely related people, in the eighteenth century, they had developed a reputation for ``recalcitrance''---no Pirah¥~{a}s are known to have ``converted'' at any period of their history.
p270
The immediacy of experience principle means that if you haven't experienced something directly, your stories about it are largely irrelevant. This rendered them relatively impermeable to missionary efforts based on stories of long-ago past that no one alive has witnessed.
The Pirah¥~{a}s' rejection of the gospel caused me to question my own faith. This surprised me, I was no novice after all. I had graduated at the top of my class from Moody Bible Institute. I had preached on the streets of Chicago, spoken in rescue missions, gone door-to-door, and debated atheists and agnostics in my own culture. I was well trained in apologetics and personal evangelism.
But I had now also been trained as a scientist, where evidence was crucial, where I would demand for any claim evidence similar to what the Pirah¥~{a}s were now requesting of me. I did not have the evidence that they wanted. I only had subjective support for what I was saying, my own feelings.
Another edge to the Pirah¥~{a}s' challenge was my growing respect for them. There was so much about them that I admired. They were a sovereign people. And they were in effect telling me to peddle my goods elsewhere. They were telling me that my message had no purchase among them.
All the doctrines and faith I had held dear were a glaring irrelevancy in this culture. They were superstition to the Pirah¥~{a}s. And they began to seem more and more like superstition to me.
I began to seriously question the nature of faith, the act of believing in something unseen. Religious books like the Bible and the Koran glorified this kind of faith in the nonobjective and counterintuitive---life after death, virgin birth, angels, miracles, and so on. The Pirah¥~{a}s' values of immediacy of experience and demand for evidence made all this seem deeply dubious.
p272
The Pirah¥~{a}s made me question concepts of truth that I had long adhered to and lived by. The questioning of my faith in God, coupled with life among the Pirah¥~{a}s, led me to question what is perhaps an even more fundamental component of modern thought, the concept of truth itself. Indeed, I decided that I lived under delusion---the delusion of truth. God and truth are two sides of the same coin. Life and mental well-being are hindered by both, at least if the Pirah¥~{a}s are right. And their quality of inner life, their happiness and contentment, strongly supports their values.
p273
The Pirah¥~{a}s are firmly committed to the pragmatic concept of utility. They don't believe in a heaven above us, or a hell below us, or that any abstract cause is worth dying for. They give us an opportunity to consider what a life without absolutes, like righteousness or holiness and sin, could be like. And the vision is appealing.
Is it possible to live a life without the crutches of religion and truth? The Pirah¥~{a}s do so live. They share some of our concerns, of course, since many of our concerns derive from our biology. But they live most of their lives outside these concerns because they have independently discovered the usefulness of living one day at a time.
They have no craving for truth as a transcendental reality. Indeed, the concept has no place in their values. Truth to the Pirah¥~{a}s is catching a fish, rowing a canoe, laughing with your children, loving your brother, dying with malaria. Does this make them more primitive? Many anthropologists have suggested so, which is why they are so concerned about finding out the Pirah¥~{a}s' notion about God, the world, and creation.
Let's ask ourselves if it is more sophisticated to look at the universe with worry, concern, and a belief that we can understand it all, or to enjoy life as it comes, recognizing the likely futility of looking for truth or God?
The Pirah¥~{a}s have built their culture around what is useful to their survival. They don't worry what they don't know, nor do they think they can or do know it all. Likewise, they do not crave the products of others' knowledge or solutions. Their views, not so much as I summarize them dryly here, but as they are lived out in the Pirah¥~{a}s' daily lives, have been extremely helpful to me and persuasive as I have looked at my own life and the beliefs that I held, many of them without warrant. Much of what I am today, including my nontheistic view of the world, I owe at least in part to the Pirah¥~{a}s.