At 11:14 PM 3/15/99 -0800, KMO wrote:
>> What position do "Brethetarians" advance? Are you sure I am one?
>
>That was a reference to one of Prof. Tim's recent posts in which he
>likened reason to air to express how essential it is to good living.
>It's essential, but, like air, it doesn't provide for all of one's
>needs. A Breathetarian would claim otherwise.
My point was the Tim was attacking a straw man. No-one is claiming
that rationality is all that should be. Some of us are claiming
that it is the best "way of knowing", the best way to make
decisions, and the best way to analyze ideas for merit.
No-one is claiming that other methods cannot arrive at the same
answers. Sometimes they can through pure chance (divination
using random variables) or because they evolved to simulate
reasoning (intuition, emotions, faith).
I doubt the silverbacks would disagree with any of the above, so what are we arguing about again? Are both sides attacking straw men? I guess I'm still looking for a clear, unambiguous statement about the alleged virtues of faith. So far all I've got it that sometimes it saves you time and the effort of thinking.
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/