From: Geoff Smith (geoffs@unixg.ubc.ca)
Date: Sat Apr 25 1998 - 16:07:05 MDT
Erik Moeller <flagg@oberberg-online.de> so wisely spake unto us:
> > Good grief, a baseball team holds regular meet-
> > ings, and may even have a set of principles,
> > so is a baseball team a religion and thus
> > a cult?
>
> If the baseball team claims that the ball must be covered with red goo to
> fly well, and it does so without any evidence, yeah, then the last
missing
> feature for it to be a cult, the religious belief in something without
> evidence, is fulfilled.
>
> Your red goos are individual freedom, free marketship and extropy.
Ever time I have seen you try to attack free markets with any sort of logic
or empirical evidence, that logic and evidence is flawlessy refuted by
members of this list,(eg. John Clark, Lee Daniel Crocker, Anton Sherwood)
who cite a larger body of contradictory evidence and well-thought-out logic
which supports the benefits of a free market.
Let me put it in a baseball analogy for better comprehension: Most of the
people on No-Goo Baseball List(created specifically to discuss baseballs
without red goo, under the recognized *assumption* that red goo is bad)
think that a baseball will fly the best without red goo. This idea comes
from scientific research, practical experience, and the fact that whenever
a red goo supporter comes on to the list, all his points are easily and
completely rebutted. You come along, telling everyone that playing or even
thinking about playing without red goo is not only in error, but bordering
on fascism. You drop a couple book names (maybe Noam Chomsky is a linguist
and a baseball player?), give some vague evidence about how un-gooed balls
are morally repugnant, and throw out a bunch of red-goo propaganda that has
been heard by everyone on the list a million times over. Your points are
destroyed by evidence, yet you consistently claim that *everyone else* is
faithful to un-gooey balls, that this belief is not supported by evidence,
and that you are doing everyone a favour by revealing
non-gooey-baseball-supporters as cult-members. You also accuse the creator
of the Extropian No-Goo Baseball List of being a cult leader because he
created a list that does not involve talking about red goo, and because
*some* people on the list have opinions on red goo that contradict yours.
Do you really think anyone is going to take you seriously using a strategy
such as this? (beside playing silly logic games with your posts ;-) What
are you trying to acheive?
IMHO, the only thing you are achieving here is wasting everyone's time by
throwing out a statement like "you all belong to a cult" to a bunch of
anti-cultists,(who are justifiably perturbed by such a negative label) then
not backing it up with any evidence, or contorting the meaning of cult
until it basically describes every philosophy ever postulated, including
yours.
ciao,
Geoff.
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