>From: Robert Owen <rowen@technologist.com>
>
>"The human take on God and the afterlife" should be treated as a problem??
>
>What other "take" could there be, unless we vastly expand the scope of
>our inquiry to include putative extraterrestrial cultures?
>
>Why should any belief-system be treated as a problem?
The belief system of other people is only a problem for you when, because of
that belief system other people feel the need to impact your life. For
instance, many of the fundamentalist Muslim stripe consider western
civilization in general (and the US in particular) to be the agent of Satan.
As such, their belief system leads them to do things like blow up things
which belong to the west. Is that a problem? I think so.
A little closer to home we have the fundamentalist Christians, some of whom
feel it is their devine duty to thwart the efforts of Satan by blowing up
abortion clinics, outlawing abortion, blocking the recognition of same-sex
marriages, and prohibiting scientific research which is offensive to their
Judeo-Christian ethic or encroaches on the domain of their Creator (much of
which is of great value to our Extropian hopes). Is that a problem?
Hey, I'm a live and let live kind of guy. Believe whatever nonsense you
want. Just don't ruin *my* day with *your* beliefs.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:05:48 MDT