[extropy-chat] (no subject)

[Olga Bourlin]

From: Mike Dougherty 
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 11:26 PM

> I still don't understand the almost rabid counter-religion sentiment here.

What's not to understand?  Do you think it's OK to believe in lies?

Speaking for myself, I have said it before and I'll say it again - I'm ecumenical about religions - I detest them all.  That's  not rabidity, that's ... equanimity! :)

Religion is ... I think it may have been Robert Ingersoll who defined it as:  "... an aristocracy of the air."    

> Miffed?  No.  mainly frustrated by my own inability to phrase the question neutrally enough that anyone understands what I am saying.  I know the burden of clarity here is on me (the sender) rather than the reader(s) 

Maybe you would encounter the same problem trying to make people understand what's just "a little bit pregnant."  Maybe there's just no neutrality there.  One is either a superstitious sort ... or a rational skeptical sort?  

> Me, Religious?  Definitely no.  I assume a high degree of probability to the utility and fitness of my own world-assessment faculties.  I would imagine this to be commonly true of any rational person.  Of course, believing that probability to be absolutely 1 might lead to the kind of fanaticism that "religionists" claim in the name of god. 

You know, you can dress up the ole' Emperor in all sorts of oblique and opaque and grandiloquent invisible vestments ... but he still ain't got no clothes.

Olga
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