# (no subject) *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 23 Dec 2011* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Lee Berman *23 Dec 2011, 14:22* > Gerry Quinn: The experts don’t just tell me how it works, they produce extensive > and consistent mathematical models covering a wide range of domains and invite me > to pick holes in them, or carry out any experiment that might invalidate them. > Lee is spouting a tired old argument which uses cultural relativism to assail all > notions of objective truth. As I see it, if it is human-created it is, by definition, not objective truth. How could it be? Only God is objective. The rest of us were gestated in a womb and raised in an ape-like family and social community. No big black rectangles around that I can see...Math and science can have no claim on universal truth until we have multiple alien races across the universe demonstrating identical use. Cultural relativism? That's good! Using a political/social term as judgement of one's own universal superiority is what I was talking about in the previous post. Scientist= Priest. --- ### David Stockhoff *23 Dec 2011, 14:36 · in reply to Lee Berman* > On 12/23/2011 9:22 AM, Lee Berman wrote: >> Gerry Quinn: The experts don’t just tell me how it works, they produce extensive >> and consistent mathematical models covering a wide range of domains and invite me >> to pick holes in them, or carry out any experiment that might invalidate them. >> Lee is spouting a tired old argument which uses cultural relativism to assail all >> notions of objective truth. > As I see it, if it is human-created it is, by definition, not objective truth. How > could it be? Only God is objective. The rest of us were gestated in a womb and raised > in an ape-like family and social community. No big black rectangles around that I can > see...Math and science can have no claim on universal truth until we have multiple > alien races across the universe demonstrating identical use. > > Cultural relativism? That's good! Using a political/social term as judgement of > one's own universal superiority is what I was talking about in the previous post. > Scientist= Priest. Naturally, to a scientist or priest, that equal sign doesn't work at all. ---