On 2 Nov 2003, at 4:00 am, Dan Minette wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "William T Goodall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 2:28 PM Subject: Re: religious/political question
Unfortunately, as Dan Minette pointed out last year this definition
'can equally be applied to mountain climbing, biking, etc.' - because
it is not a definition of religion at all, it is a definition of the
figurative usage of the word religion as applied to things that are not
religion at all in a normal sense.
And, IIRC, you jumped all over me when I was making that argument. You even alleged that my momma sewed socks that smell. :-)
I wouldn't call you any more or less religious than a Marxist.
And neither of us would call Marxism a religion. I would call Marxism-Leninism/Stalinism the official state (pseudo) religion of the former USSR though... and it was evil, EVIL I say!
People with
theist, non-theist, and atheistic viewpoints can be dogmatic about their
metaphysical beliefs. One of the manifestations of dogmatism that I have
noticed over the years is the attitude that "error has no rights." Another
is the denial of data that contradicts a priori belief. A third is the
metaphorical extrapolation that is then taken as literal truth.
Like metaphysics ? :)
Religions can be quite undogmatic when needs must. The LDS positions on polygamy and the cut of the sacred undergarments for example...
An interesting aside to this is a conversation I had with an atheist friend
of mine during a long drive at the end of a business trip. He pointed out
that the conflict between evolution and fundamentalism didn't really start
until the 20s. At that time, Social Darwinism was raising its ugly head;
and folks took notice. The real fight was between fundamentalists and
folks who held a nonsensical extrapolation from a reasonable (albeit rather
general at the time) scientific theory.
So the Scopes trial was a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water? I can see that people objecting to the nonsense of Social Darwinism could get it conflated with biological Darwinism, but I didn't know it actually happened. I thought Scopes was purely about the teaching of evolution in school.
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth
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