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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (1116)	9/28/2000 10:28:09 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Hi Rambi! "The myth of Mental illness" was one of my favourites. He goes back a few years. For a time I was very much enamoured of his views. However, one learns that reality is too complex to be embraced by the philosophy of any one man. Another author that I loved, probably no longer read, was R.D. Laing. I believed in the therapeutic views of Laing, his rationalizing of mental illness, his ability to crawl inside his client's heads and see their illness as reasonable-- but in the end, it was his depression and alcoholism that destroyed him. So illness is not a myth. When we accumulate enough of it--we die. In regards to Luther, one cannot argue two positions at once. Because I was standing on one side of the fence, does not mean I was entirely unsympathetic to the other view(s). Actually, I am presently reading a biography by Haile. Luther was indeed brilliant, witty, and profound on the one hand, and simple and child-like on the other. Leaving aside what has been covered...the hate and rage he sometimes expresses is so palpable that it stuns. I cannot, in conscience, see it as an expression of health. It seems incongruous and unkind to attribute it to moral defects in a God loving and fearing man, who otherwise had such greatness. I find many of his beliefs repugnant, as he would find mine evil, but no-one can deny him his place in history.

To: Rambi who wrote (1116)	9/28/2000 11:59:39 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Hey, Rambi, great to see you here! I've often considered mental illness a highly relative term, frequently used with questionable agendas. When is someone mentally ill? That has the same problem as when do grains of wheat become a heap. Am I mentally ill because I can't swear there is a God? In some circles, yes. In most, no. My mother worked on the Psychiatric Emergency Team (PET) in LA County and was the first line BEFORE the cops in a psychiatric emergency (nuts with guns, raving loonies, etc.). It is pretty clear when someone is over the top. But it is a slippery slope. This ties back to the recent discussion of Godel's theorem (and proving the truth of propositions). I believe logic breaks down (Solon's sorities examples too) because the fundamental fabric of the universe has uncertainty in it. I can never really say something is absolutely TRUE because all truths are relative. It is really a matter of HOW true. In engineering they talk about a 5 nines system. That means its probability of working is 0.99999. Most people are uncomfortable with the fact that they could be the unlucky one when it breaks. I was once told by a VP of Marketing "I don't want any failures in the field." My response was "None???!!! Ever???!!!" Cost is roughly 10x for every "nine" you add. With infinite "nines" it would be infinitely expensive at transcendental order (mathspeak for REALLY, really infinite). I told her "I need a number and then I can estimate how expensive it will be to meet that." This was a medical device company. Can you imagine the fun that a trial lawyer would have with that one? The rhetoric would be "Ladies and gentlemen, here is a company that can put the value on a human life." Duh!! We do that every time we get behind the wheel.

To: Rambi who wrote (1116)	9/28/2000 1:22:17 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 28931

Hi Rambi That sounds like a very interesting book and I love the quote. When you look at history so often mental illness (or idiocy) was used to explain differences between societies. I remember some of our discussions on another thread about the Irish and the English. The English, in the past, often would say the Irish were mentally ill (as a race) or less intelligent than the English. It wasn't that the Irish were actually studied in any way, but their poverty and their language, and their customs, made it easy for the English to assume there was something wrong with them. It's very nice to see you here. I hope you post often.