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To: maceng2 who wrote (23808)	10/3/2002 8:05:11 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

PB, I read through some of the paean to mysticism. There are not a lot of things which I find pure drivel, but that's what I read. Which I know is not a very good critique, but it's all the effort I can be bothered allocating to it. The essential point not to lose is that many people can know something in science from their own observation. In mysticism, it's a secret club for the anointed. How do we know it's the word of Big Santa? Just trust the people who tell you to trust them - you can't check it for yourself. In science, you can check for yourself whether something is true or not. You don't need to trust anybody's reporting. What is fascinating is how religious wackoes cannot reason. They slide sideways and always end up in the only place they can, which is that you just have to have faith. Faith in them, because they are better than you and they have got 'the word'. Which is hilarious because there are so many brands, all claiming to have the almighty word, which not surprisingly, are mutually exclusive. Send money and get The Word. Preferably send girls too [or altar boys in the case of Catholic priests - let's face it, you have to be at least moderately suspicious of sworn-to-celibacy men who wear ladies' clothes, silly hats and wave smoke around over dead people and sprinkle babies' heads with water]. Mqurice

To: maceng2 who wrote (23808)	10/3/2002 10:47:20 PM
From: Moominoid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Yeah that was the kind of thing I was referring to :)

To: maceng2 who wrote (23808)	10/5/2002 8:14:11 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 74559

Ok PB, I've now read all 19 pages of that thing Against Method and it's irrelevant to my point. My point, to heavily belabour the point, which seems difficult for people to grasp, is that mysticism and religion involve trusting somebody else to do the observing and thinking for you and accepting that your own puny brain and observational powers are not able to do the seeing and figuring out. Trust me. That's what they say. The central point about rationality, reason and science is that knowledge, observation and thinking and understanding can be done by anybody else [who has the necessary ability to think, observe etc - therefore a chimp or worm can't do the observing and thinking]. The point, to belabour it even more, is that a claim that something is a fact can be checked by somebody else. That's what science is about. That method book is about processes and blah blah blah, which seemed correct as far as I read, though he got one part wrong, which was that the west just got to be better by power. No. It got better by better thinking, not by power. There's no persuading the Mindless Zombies of the world - they follow where they are led. Sheep need a shepherd. We the Sheeple, Zomby