On Nov 21, 2004, at 10:21 PM, JDG wrote:
At 02:55 PM 11/20/2004 -0700 Warren Ockrassa wrote:Well, I tend to go by what I see. And when I see cycles of goading,
prodding, and then complaining about results by someone, and then see
evidence of that cycle commencing once more, I tend to assume it's
going to proceed as has happened before. It's just pattern recognition,
that's all.
For whatever it is worth, I did not expect a response from Dr. Brin from my
post, and if a response did come, I did not anticipate that I would
respond.
Well, actually I find that more than a little surprising, because it does seem, from my point of view at any rate, that there's a pattern. I've already gone into that. There's no need to rehash it.
My hope, is that at minimum, my post would cause him to
seriously reflect on the merits of his upcoming "Big Suggestion" essay.
At best, I would hope that it would cause him to engage supporters of the
President more civilly and reasonably on the List.
Depends. I've seen acrimony come from both sides (I'm not singling you out; I'm thinking of others who might more closely align to your views), which leads me to believe that there's a *lot* of thin skin about -- or a lot of history.
I am not particularly happy about the fact that Dr. Brin can't mention
prominent Americans who share my ideas, ideals, and beliefs without
accusing them of being:
-monsters
-traitors who are beholden to one of the worst regimes on Earth
-nepotistic frat brothers
-evil barons who still bread from the poor to fatten their wallets
-Machiavellian manipulators of idealistic religious-minded people
-all of the above
Well, some of them might well be some or all of the above. But isn't it feasible, also, that he's highlighting extremes without necessarily trying to push you into the same categories?
About a year ago there was someone on a totally different list who took exception to a comment I made about greedy CEOs who destroy corporations. Such people do exist, of course, and I was thinking in particular of the Enron fiasco when making that reference.
Well, this individual, who is really a rather reasonable person, took grave exception to my comments because he happened to be CEO of his own corporation. He'd made a generalization from what I'd said about one specific type of misdeed with one company in mind to a swipe at himself and the ethics with which he ran his own business.
What I'm suggesting here is that it's possible you're not meant to be pulled into a favorite target group of extremists; that perhaps you're self-identifying with Dr. Brin's hobbyhorses a bit too closely.
I could be wrong, of course, but it might be something worth considering, particularly in light of the following.
About the only thing left is for Dr. Brin to accuse Republicans of taking
pride in beating puppies. ;-)
No, no -- drowning. Drowning puppies. They beat *immigrants* and make slippers out of kittens.
[Dan]
Its interesting that you made a broad swipe, insulting 90%+ of Americans, including JDG and myself, and then cry foul when JDG says "Oh no".
Where, precisely, did I do such a thing?
<quote> The best way to be free from religious terrorism is to be free from religion. <end quote>
If you can't agree that people of faith would probably find the above quote
to be "insulting", then we will probably have difficulty in communicating
with each other.
This is what I was referring to just above. I'm not sure *if* you'd want to self-align with a terrorist cult, nor why you would want to align with that, if so. I'm sorry if you made that connection, but perhaps I'm not the one to blame for that. (I'll go into that soon; first I should address my intent with the above text.)
What I'd like is for all people of all faiths to recognize that, while religion is a source of great comfort for many, it is also a source of terrible atrocity for many. Those who would point to Islam specifically and accuse its extremists of being the only examples of bad behavior would do well to consider the actions within their own ranks (or what they might consider to be their own ranks).
My own reasoning on the topic is simplistic, but adequate to suit my needs: Religious extremists are dangerous; if extremism is sourced in or fueled by religion, it seems reasonable to me that the best cure is to eliminate the cause. (This does not mean all religion, necessarily; the point of a two-line quote is not to express an entire worldview but to get some gears turning.)
To my mind religion should only be tolerated to the extent that it is tolerant. As soon as one gets into discussions of which group is better than others, which group is bound for eternal reward and which is not, and particularly how to control others so their actions are in keeping with the dictates of a given religion, one is beginning to tread dangerous ground.
Now I'll not say that the ethics set up in most religious systems are a priori invalid. Injunctions against murder, for instance, are sound regardless of the reasons they're arrived at; that is, advising against killing innocents is itself a value that I don't believe needs independent verification or justification. However, there is a vast grey area that begins where the extremes fall off. One issue is whether, for instance, one religion's ideas about who can and cannot get married should be allowed to hold sway in a national forum.
It is when religions begin to abrogate my rights that I begin to resist them. This means that a significant minority -- but a minority nonetheless -- are religions I resist strenuously. Put another way, the answer to religious extremism in another nation is not to ramp up the religious extremism here.
That said I don't believe I lumped you into that category. If you've self-aligned into it, I'm sorry, but the choice would have been yours to make, not mine.
My recollection was that his statement was, quote, "Oh no, not another one."
I'm sure that if you were not at the time, that you are at least now aware
that this List has long contained a small group of individuals who are
extraordinarily intolerant of religion.
Well, perhaps some of those individuals have themselves been victims of extraordinarily intolerant religion. There's quite a lot of it in the world, and much of it rooted right here in America.
You managed to very quickly fit
right in with that small group. As Dan Minette, pointed out, my comment
was not sneering at your atheism, it was directed towards your sneering
atheism.
I don't *think* I was sneering. I think I was suggesting that there are certain facts about the world that are incontrovertible, and those who align with belief systems that are in direct contradiction to those facts are either insane or at the very least self-deceiving. (Which is worse, actually, in my opinion.)
That's not meant to be a sneering atheistic comment; it's meant to be a recognition of a fact (albeit a blunt one). A good example would be anyone who tries to assert the flatness of Earth or deny the heliocentricity of the solar system on purely religious grounds. Another good example would be someone who believes that by murdering 3,000 civilians he'll be in some heaven with endless virgins.
To me there are degrees of separation from reality, but they are all, in the end, separations nonetheless. With a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, clinging to a belief because it makes one feel secure is human and understandable; but if the only way to hold together an entire worldview is to deliberately ignore contrary evidence, it seems clear to me that the worldview, and not the world, is what is at fault. It is not the science text that needs to be corrected in re evolution, for instance; it is the suggestion of a literal six-day creation that is in error.
That alone is not strictly bad, but when that same inherently-erroneous system is then propounded as truth, or when its tenets or dictates are used to define or delimit the lives and rights of others, that system is no longer quaint or a curiosity; it is a social cancer that endangers much more than the superficial few immediately impacted by its social engineering.
I'm suggesting not that all religion is inherently bad or faulty or wrong. I'm merely saying that religion is fine as long as it keeps to itself.
My own separation from religion was very gradual and took over a decade. I don't expect anyone to make the jump in a day or two. But I would like to see a world wherein it's possible to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the entire concept of a god is totally invalid. It would be very interesting to see how behavior changed if laws, institutions, and societies were structured from a perspective of lack of immortality or eternal judgment.
At the very least, a lot of the motivation to conduct jihad (or crusades) would vanish.
There are probably some people who find that idea offensive. I'm pretty sure it's not the "90% or more Americans" Dan proposed. Of the 250 million or so Americans that would make, a certain minority wouldn't even be capable of registering an opinion on religion in the first place, since infants and very small children wouldn't grasp the issues. Of the remainder, I'd be surprised if even half would find my commentary offensive. (Though I'd certainly not be surprised to find it made them uncomfortable. It's difficult to imagine a universe without a deity, but only at first.)
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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