[extropy-chat] Islamic morons win yet again

[Lee Corbin]

Robert writes

> On 9/29/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > It's less about engineering a perfect meme-set, than about shielding against contradictory memes.

> Dennett must have felt this way as well.  At the lecture about his book he gave
> at Harvard a few months ago, he didn't say this but did take the "extreme" position
> that the best solution was *required* education in and *mandatory* testing the
> knowledge retention about *all* major religions.  He seemed to imply that this
> should be done at a relatively young age (junior high school or high school). 

Ah, the enternal vision.  We can just remake the new Soviet man and all will be
well.  Education is the key, ah yes.  "*Required*" and "*mandatory*" are words
that roll so easily off some tongues.

Well, no!  You can talk yourself blue (or have socialist training sessions all day
long as our Russian friends tried), to all the blockhead children, and even then
you don't extinquish religion. You can make the people come, but you can't make
them believe you.

(On the other side of the coin, it's why I don't give a rat's ass if anyone were
to make my kid pray a little every day. It simply doesn't matter, except to the
deluded 20th century types who persist in thinking that what is said in schools
makes any difference.)

Now if you want to go to Orwellian extents---as in North Korea or Cuba
---well, yes, that could be different. 

Speaking of Orwellian recourse, Robert earlier wrote (Friday, September 29, 2006 12:16 PM)

> I am reasonably sure however some people are so "addicted" to their belief
> systems [1] that changing them may require rather severe educational methods. 

I was surprised that no libertarians objected to this.  Are you talking about changing
people in a free society (us) or using such force to change the thinking of enemies
in other countries who are our enemies?  If the former, then you ought to
have no more legal right to subject Western children to your own brainwashing
techniques than their parents would have to subject Western children to religious
brainwashing. EST sort of worked, but only on consenting, rather eager, adults.

Lee