RE: virus: Faith - Brodiesque style

Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Tue, 9 Mar 1999 10:15:13 -0800

This is an apt analogy, "Jake", maybe more than you realize. You are choosing to be that deer, and in the real world people really do have high-powered rifles.

Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/ Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme" http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm Free newsletter! Visit Meme Central at
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm

-----Original Message-----

From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [
mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf Of MemeLab@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 9, 1999 9:34 AM
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re: virus: Faith - Brodiesque style

In a message dated 3/9/99 8:15:46 AM Central Standard Time, MemeLab@aol.com writes:

<< I assume that you are indicating me. That is always a possibility that I consider. I would suggest, my gentle dismayed friend, that it is more likely
that there are two of us that lack internal consistency in the practice of our
ideals. However one of us does so deliberately and intentionally by holding
"articles of faith" that are in principle not subjectable to rational criticism. The other may do so unintentionally by failing to completely put
into practice what he holds in principle.>>

Which is worse? Setting standards that you know you will probably never completely achieve, or lowering your principles until they are easily achievable?

A fideist indignantly calling a pancritical rationalist a hypocrite is such an
easy sport. It's like putting regular feed out for a deer, and then one day deciding to "hunt" it with a high powered rifle from afar, and claiming it as
a "trophy". But try outrunning a strange one on foot as a human with only a
knife - in IT'S world on IT'S terms. It's like trying to fight evolution itself.

As long as you are on YOUR terms of faith, where you don't feel any reason to
engage your assumptions at all, it is such a pointless endeavor to attack a pancritical rationalist. To make it remotely meaningful, you have to become
one yourself, at least for a short time.

Bye for now.

-Jake