Subj : Re: "Hams to the Rescue A To : alt.ham-radio.vhf-uhf From : Matt Osborn Date : Sat Sep 24 2005 11:26:07 From Newsgroup: alt.ham-radio.vhf-uhf On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 08:23:00 -0500, "Finnigann" wrote: > To: Matt Osborn >-=> Matt Osborn wrote to alt.ham-radio.vhf-uhf,rec <=- > > MO> From Newsgroup: > MO> alt.ham-radio.vhf-uhf > > MO> On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 22:17:42 GMT, "K+HB" > MO> wrote: > > > > > wrote > > > >> To rely upon faith requires an explicit acknowledgment of an unknown > >> power greater than oneself. > > > >No it doesn't. It simply requires an explicit acknowledgement of "we haven't > >learned the reason yet". No need for superstitions. > > MO> There is never a need for superstitions. Recognizing the unknown is > MO> good enough for me. > > >If only that were true... > >Why add on layers of superstitious crap to make up something totally uneeded? I >quit believing in boogiemen along time ago. Hopefulll the rest of mankind will >too, someday. Superstitions are unnecessary, in my opinion, believing is unavoidable, it a necessary condition of human existence. Believing derives from self-awareness, we recognize ourselves as something separate and apart from everything else. All of our knowledge represents that which we have extracted from everything else. Necessarily, that which we do not know remains in the everything else camp. All of our knowledge, including science, is couched within certain assumptions. For instance, while we understand the effect of gravity on the small scale, we really have no idea of how it actually works. We have faith that what we have discovered so far is predictable and useful information. We once had faith that the Earth was the center of the universe, while we now see that as silly, it most certainly wasn't at the time. Likewise, much of what we take as hard science today will seem equally silly in the future. If we quit believing in the 'boogeyman we fall susceptible to our foibles and our grand notions of the human experience. >Perhaps on that day, 3/4 of the world will have one less thing to kill over. Civilization consists of wrenching predictability from chaos. Each of us has our own beliefs as to how civilization should be structured and there is no knowledge of any pre-determined 'correct way' to structure civilization. I don't mean to sound sarcastic here, but in my opinion, it is superstitious to believe that there is a peaceful nirvana where killing is eliminated. We have seen eras where killing and wars have been reduced because a single civilization had dominated all others across the entire civilized world. But it is ONLY through domination that such eras have existed. The dominate civilization will kill those who intractably oppose them or that civilization will itself succumb to the opposing civilization. -- msosborn at msosborn dot com .