I admit that "rational" is a difficult concept to nail down. How about
this? A person is rational is they act in a manner logically consistent
with their goals and beliefs.
>consider myself a rational person. Yet I do not dogmatize. It seems that
Why don't you consider yourself to be rational?
>rationality has always been synonomous with conformity, and these ideas you
>express in the Church of Virus once were non-conformist views, but now we
>find it quite common to see people openly admit they "don't believe in
>God."
I disagree, I see rationality and conformity as orthogonal concepts.
I'm not even sure there is a statistical correlation, given the kind
of behavior I observe in society.
>Certainly to the extent that not dogmatizing and pure rationality are your
>objective, I applaud you and whole-heartedly agree with the Church of
>Virus. But, for some people with small minds who happen upon your page, you
>may want to distinguish between what rationality means to the herd, and
>what it means to you.
I guess if we want to be relatively popular we should cater to small
minds. As a group we still haven't decided whether to being popular
or elitist is the way to go. Any opinions?
>That said, I also think you may be able to spread the virus more if you had
>things such as official membership. Maybe you do and I didn't see it? This
Agreed. But first I think we should attempt to articulate our common
beliefs so that potential members can decide whether they would like
to join. This has been one of the main activities on the list since
it started.
>may sound like a cliche', but you would be surprised at the number of
>people who get a sense of fulfillment from things such as that. I am a
>former member of LaVey's Church of Satan and a current member of the Church
>of Euthanasia and in both cases, you are dealing with ideals which reflect
>a calling to change behavior based on falsehood which was taught to
>members. It re-inforces the ideas to give people a sort of pseudo-dogma
Based on a falsehood? Is this supposed to be a good thing? One of our
original ideals was to create the first religion that avoided that.
>with such things as membership cards and the like. United in the same
>belief, but not extending into "spiritual" ends.
>Let me know what you think.
>And if you haven't heard of us, check us out at www.paranoia.com/coe/
Will do. Thanks for you comments.
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/