RE: virus:
Michael Hills (mhills@philips.oz.au)
Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:08:10 +1000
On Thursday, October 22, 1998 5:55 AM, sodom [SMTP:Sodom@ma.ultranet.com] wrote:
>
>
> the great tinkerer wrote:
>
> > >I think you will find that as far as churches go, we are pretty lax in
> > most
> > >respects, but we all seem to make at least one demand - you need to be
> > rational
> >
> > whats makes a person irrational? if i believe in god am i irrational?
>
> I was speaking specifically of your need to present discussion in a rational
> manner, be able to argue your point rationally. "If I believe in god am I
> irrational?" Yes and No. You may be a rational person in general, but when
> it comes to your beliefs, then yes, you are irrational. To have faith in
> something with no evidence to support your position and a great deal of
> evidence against your position, then you are not rational about said
> subject.
To go 'meta' on the these points, couldn't one just say that rationalism
itself is a meme, just as religion is named one. In that case, by what right can
you judge one meme (rationalism) better than another (religion, or any other
irrational belief)??
except that perhaps memetics (being a 'science' - another damn succesful meme)
could be considered a mutation of the rationalism meme, and thus memetics
precludes competing memes such as 'faith'.
I guess its part of the whole post-modern thing (as far I as I can follow that
argument).. there are no absolutes, its all relative, there is no _one_
universal truth etc.
thus, when you say "you may be a rational person _in general_, but when it comes
to your beliefs".. I say, what's the *true* difference between being rational
and having faith? at a high level they're just two memes..
my 2c
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