Re: Why atheism beats agnosticism (Was: Re: Contacting God)

Max More (maxmore@primenet.com)
Thu, 23 Apr 1998 12:42:38 -0700


At 08:51 PM 4/23/98 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>Anyone is free to (non-coercively) prevent others from being stupid. For
>instance, I'm doing that
>>every day I teach a class.
>
>Right, and I know that no (well, probably, but you never know) Extropian
>would hold a grudge against this. But Lee Dee called himself a "militant
>atheist". Maybe I have a lingual problem here, but "militant" comes from
>"military", and military is certainly not what I would call non-coercive.

Yes, you have a lingual problem. It should be perfectly obvious that Daniel
did not mean that he likes to go around forcing people to recant their
religious beliefs at the point of a gun. What he meant by "militant" is no
different from the way it is standardly used: it means you like to pick a
fight. The kind of fights some atheists like to pick are
verbal/intellectual fights, not physical ones.

>
>>Before deciding that you're militantly anti-Extropian, it would help if you
>>understood what is extropian.
>
>I think I've understood it. Probably better than you, the founder.

Sure, Erik.

BTW, if you're militantly anti-Extropian, you don't belong on this
particular email list. It's intended for Extropians and fellow travellers.
You're completely free to criticize extropian thinking elsewhere, such as
the Transhuman list, but it's not the function of *this* list.

Max

Max More, Ph.D.
more@extropy.org
Updated website (Jan 98): http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
President, Extropy Institute: exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org