RE: virus: agnosticism again (was Site du jour (Temple of the Vam
Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:48:40 -0000
> From: David McFadzean[SMTP:david@lucifer.com]
>
> The following is excerpted from
> <http://pw1.netcom.com/~temple/truth.html>:
>
> We laugh in scorn at the humans who find themselves believing in the
> superstitious nonsense which our kind created for their control.
>
How do people feel about this: every time you "believe in"
anything, a meme has you in its thrall. So agnosticism,
applied generally, not just to belief in God, is the ultimate
meme-control mechanism. (To believe that something
does not exist is to believe, while to be agnostic as to its
existence is not.) Sure, agnosticism too is a meme, but
it is a minimal one, unlike rationality, which is relatively
complex, and certainly very useful, but not as
fundamental as agnosticism. Actually, if I recall
Huxley's formulation correctly, agnosticism supplies a
simple and coherent reason to be rational, the latter
being merely a means to that end: believing only in
that for which there is sufficient reason to do so (where
"believing" includes "disbelieving").
Robin