From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Oct 31 1999 - 12:51:02 MST
> [CurtAdams@aol.com thinks] variety is good. Religions, as Voltaire pointed
> out,
> become tyrannical when alone, participate in gruesome civil war in pairs, but
> become well-behaved when facing a slew of competitors. This variety means
> that even if the superstitious types win the day, we won't face a theocracy,
> just a lot of airheads.
Thanks Curt! Very insightful comment. This explains why religious
organizations in general have been better behaved this century: the
proliferation of competitors for customers. The same holds true
for cultures. When there is a great variety represented in the
neighborhood, everyone benefits, as each puts forth their
best foot.
As for superstitious types winning the day, I often dispair that
this is exactly what is happening. The Chinese are showing that
superstition is not necessarily passed from one generation to the
next, but can spontaneously arise where none existed previously,
and when it does so, cannot be stopped, even by brutal and
tyrannical oppression.
If we had a spaceship with a collection of rational thinking humans
and no influence from earth, I suspect that 4 generations down the
road, religions would spontaneously form, and would likely
go thru the destructive phases described by Voltaire. {8-[ spike
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