Re: Judgment day on the extro list

From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 23:34:03 MST


What? <re reading email several times...> What?

1) Re: the leap from "I just figure I don't have enough data to think
further than the data" to
                     "I like to be told what to think":
This is mind-boggling to me.
Your words might be "simpler", but I can't find the connection to mine.
I don't know how you got there.
I cannot at present imagine a path of _reasoning_ which would lead
there.
I therefore speculate that this was an emotional response on your part.
I don't want to argue about whether this is so, I merely report it for
whatever value it may have.

2) Re: the leap from "I just figure I don't have enough data to think
further than the data" to
                      <Any statement containing a (pre/pro)scription and
"we", "you", or "they">:
This one is more understandable to me.
I spoke as plainly as I could.
I said *I* twice, and I wasn't saying *you*, or *we*, or *they*. (As
Daffy Duck said: "a-HA! PROnoun trouble!")
I know how to say "you don't have enough data", and I did not say that.
I decline to say whether I think it. About theists, or atheists, or
greencheesists (I actually like the last bunch), or any other ists,
ismists or ismismatists.

If it sounds to you as if I'm telling someone what to think, I can only
conclude that you're reading something in.
IF my speculation in (1) is correct, that could explain it. I don't mean
this speculation to be uncivil, by the way.

In conclusion: See my first paragraph in the original "Judgment day"
post. I was reporting, I was not exhorting.

Someone other than myself is of course free to impute that I was/am
duplicitous, or ignorant of my deepest motivations, or even some sort of
*tool* of more doctrinaire people. Such a one is also free to insist,
jackdaw-style, that everyone ought to know what that one knows. *Shrug*
I don't usually operate strongly along the Myers-Briggs "J" axis.

But thanks for the feedback. I can use it.

MMB

Clint O'Dell wrote:
>
> >>I just figure I don't have enough data to think further
> than the data. <<
>
> So in simpler words you like to be told what to think?
> Note: This is a question, not a statement, from my
> interpretation of your reasoning this sounds as if you are
> saying we should not look for our own answers.
>
> Clint O'Dell clintodell@visto.com
> President, Atheists of Denver
> http://atheists.freeservers.com
> ______________________________________________________________________
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