From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 01:24:49 MDT
Cory Przybyla wrote:
>>How would you fight against voluntarily spread memes
>>without
>>seriously threatening individual freedoms?
>
>
> The idea here is to start up a small group that gets
> right in the middle of the Religites propagandizing
> and demonstrations and hands out information, and
> spreads memes of the opposite sort. If even slightly
> successful it possibly would threaten individual
> freedoms in the same way that laws against child abuse
> violate a parent's freedom to beat their child.
>
Are you alluding to a notion that parents don't have the right
to attempt to communicate their values to their children? Do
you believe a fixed entity, say the State, controlling their
memetic diet would do better? The point is that there is no
entity that should be entrusted with determining what are and
are not acceptable memes and thus no entity capable of policing
memes and their propagation.
>
>>I can say many things pro and con about religion but
>>I don't
>>think you can call religion, at least not without
>>state power
>>behind it, "mental terrorism". Please explain what
>>you mean by
>>this.
>
>
> I used a general term 'organized religion' to avoid
> making an already lengthy e-mail far more verbose
> since after all I was mainly seeking information that
> to analyze, and it was to my surprise that anyone even
> read the post (of course the subject line helped).
> What I am concerned about is almost all have state
> power, or a similar control over a demographic,
> community, or family.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Most of the world's
religions do not today have state power behind them. A
community or a family is a significantly different unit with
significantly less ability to coerce and control at a deep level.
> These are the ones that exhibit
> mental terrorism of course. Since I'd never gain any
> legislative influence or power with this, nor any
> large following it would be a disservice to even
> bother with anything but the rigid few. Particularly
> born-again, moral majority catholics, Islam doesn't
> seem to be around here much nor scientology. In a
> hypothetic highly structured organization with mass
> support of such ideas there would be limited power
> alloted since, after all, the point of this is to
> limit power. I was considering at the same time
> trying to develop an idea that was against mental
> terrorism (even mildly so) instead which would
> encompass everything I seek to denounce in this, but
> couldn't find any good approach to this.
>
Ah. Creating a definition of terrorism that rules out all you
are against but does not brand you a terrorist when you
righteously suppress all you are against. That game is played
by a lot of players, some of them with significant state power.
>
>>What is unwilling? I cannot step into your mind and
>>force you
>>to believe or disbelieve anything. I can present
>>arguments and
>>attempt to persuade you. Do you think that should
>>somehow be
>>prohibited if you disapprove of the ideas being
>>proposed? Some
>>people consider your own favorite ideas to be quite
>>dangerous.
>>Should you be prohibited to spread them?
>
>
> Unwilling at one extreme is of course by threat of
> violence...of course you still may not have changed
> their mind yet have forced them to conform to your
> credo. At a very mild level it's being cornered in a
This isn't the Dark Ages or the time of Inquisition. So I don't
see your threat of violence as being very realitic in any
non-theocratic state.
> mall and followed around being pressured with comments
> like "if you don't act now you'll not be saved".
Who cares about such blather? This is hardly worth denying
individual rights in order to suppress it.
> Suggesting ideas and trying to persuade wouldn't
> necessarily fall under organized religion, nor the
> slightly more specific definition of what I meant
> presented above.
Yet that is all most religions in the West have been doing for a
few hundred years. There are pushes by religious people in
power to enshrine religiously motivated laws as the law of the
land. This definitely should be fought. But fighting it on the
basis of separation of church and state seems more than adequate
without threatening individual rights.
>>No, it hasn't failed at all. The US, despite much
>>highly
>>publicized rhetoric, was not built on the basis of
>>religion but
>>was build on freedom of religious belief or
>>disbelief and the
>>separation between church and state. The US is one
>>of the most
>>religiously diverse countries, and generally
>>peacefully so, on
>>the planet. So on what grounds do you say it
>>failed?
>
>
> The history of it is irrelevant here, since I'm not
> concerned with the foundational principles, but the
> current repressive trends. I say it's failed,
The history is utterly relevant as it determined the form of the
government and its fundamental principles. It also contains the
core of how to keep religions (or any other specific sect) from
coercing others and thus threatening freedom. There have always
been waves of attempts to batter down the wall of separation in
the US. As long as we are vigilant they will not succeed.
> although not completely, because any job you go to
> (pending dress code) you can wear a "jesus saves"
> t-shirt, but not one with a skull, or perhaps an
> actual decent message. Because everyone I knew from
You must be kidding. You call this evidence that the separation
of church and state has failed?
> the south had horror stories of 'accidental' deaths,
> or suicides of children who didn't confrom to the
> town's religion.
OK. I am stopping this response. You obviously haven't thought
this through.
- samantha
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