[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...

[Robert Bradbury]

I'd like to ask a question whether anyone on the list adheres to the
Buddhist definition of "sentience" -- essentially any organism which
breathes.

If one accepts that definition then I would suspect that many, if not most,
list members are guilty of "abusing" sentient beings (it presumably requires
that one not consume meat).

If one subscribes to somewhat stricter definitions, e.g. consuming oxygen,
having "nerves", or in the simplest case cellular receptors which extract
information from the environment, then one would be eliminating fish,
insects, nematodes and presumably any "cellular" material as food sources.

In fact it would seem that only photosynthetic plants and most single celled
organisms would fall into the category of not being "abusers" of sentient
life.

With respect to the discussion involving "public" education, Dennett's
perspective was interesting.  He thought a public education about
"religions" in the broadest sense -- i.e. one has to learn about *all*
religions (sufficiently well to pass 'standardized' test about them) was the
solution to current paradigm of religious brain washing.  I know that for
myself it was an education in science that forced a direct confrontation
between evidence-based reasoning (science) and Catholic indoctrination
around the time I was 13-14 years old.  An education in a variety of
religions at an earlier age would quite likely have facilitated the
realization that one set of beliefs that I had been taught had some major
problems.  I would suspect that I would have stopped believing in a "savior"
around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

It seems that the removal of ones children from public education is perhaps
playing a major role in the revival of Christan fundamentalism (in the U.S.).
It is the ability to brainwash children and limit their exposure to other
"realities" which allows the manufacture of irrational mind-clones.  It is
easy to say that one (as a list member) would educate ones children
"properly" (in rational thinking, etc.) -- but what is to guarantee that
everyone else will do that?

Robert
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