Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (24827)	7/19/2000 2:02:38 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Many things are true that cannot satisfy the most rigorous research protocols, and we must be content with approximation and probability. We all accept authority, since we are never in a position to independently verify everything. We read textbooks, use dictionaries, carry road atlases. The concept of a truth independent of our will is precisely a bulwark against arbitrariness and shameless propaganda. The attack on Western Civilization is an attack on the objectivity of scholarship, research, and argument. On that score, conservatives have been far more reliable in fighting the nihilists...........

To: TigerPaw who wrote (24827)	7/19/2000 2:23:20 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

By the way, the problem with atheism is that there is no metaphysical basis for any finding of value whatsoever. One can come up with ethical precepts, starting from the point of man's observed nature, and using a concept like virtue as the moral equivalent of Health. Just as health is the body functioning well, so morality is the personality (and society) functioning well. However, none of it really matters, we are just automata, and what happens to us is nothing in the total scheme of things. The most primitive religion is, from the standpoint of human values, preferable, insofar as it affirms that we are persons, self- aware and capable of choice, and that what happens to each of us does matter in a morally grounded cosmos. The deep irony is that the adherence to truth, and insistence upon rigor of method, is itself a value, and equally futile in the total scheme of things as "thou shalt not commit adultery". Primitive religion may be a better bulwark against assaults on the meaningfulness of Truth than science could ever be..........