Sunday, November 20, 2005

Naturals and Unnaturals

At Pharyngula:
I think we've been dividing the world along the wrong axes. It's normal for us to dichotomize our interactions along simple, one-dimensional lines—liberal-conservative, men-women, atheist-theist—and while that is a useful way to categorize (as long as we don't get so committed to the extremes that we fail to recognize them as continua), I fear that we've neglected to notice one dimension that is extremely relevant to the current discourse.

... I need a label, so I'm going to call those people who consider material evidence paramount and regard the real world as a mostly sufficient container of phenomena that define our existence the Naturals. ...

What's the contra position? There are those who think inspiration and intuition and all the internal imagery of their minds define their external reality; that what they wish to be so will be so if only they can articulate it and select and distort evidence for the purposes of persuasion. ...

I'm going to call them Unnaturals, plainly enough.

More at the source. Needless to say, we're Naturals here...

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