Mark A. Taff wrote:
On Friday 20 January 2006 03:19, James Knott wrote:
Felix Miata wrote:
Hey Felix. I realize you contribute a lot to the group, but would you please keep the religious BS to yourself. Many of us find it offensive.
While I do find religious notions to be BS and somewhat offensive, and wholly inappropriate for the body of a message or a topic of discussion for this list, I will not begrudge someone who has a religious quote in their .sig.
To do so strikes me as making someone fake being non-religious just to be part of this group. How would everyone feel if the religious people wanted to coerce us to put religious sayings in our .sigs just so we could be a part of the group?
I understand the inherent conflict between intellect and religion, but nothing in that conflict dictates I must treat religious people poorly, other than not buying their position on creation, existence of god, etc.
Mark
Do you feel coerced when you see a religious message in a note sent by e-mail through a listserv? If someone told me that Jesus wants me to use Word Perfect, I would take that as a failed endorsement, and nothing more. The person sending the religious message may have your interests at heart, and it does not matter that your perception of your interests are different in evaluating the appropriateness of the missive. There is no "inherent conflict" between intellect and religion. Indeed, the intellectual activity among respected thinkers with respect to religious doctrine and textual interpretation is not only sizable but also admirable. The intellect, after all, is not limited to matters of "fact" or "science". It is arrogant nonsense to assert that the only intellectual activity of any value relates to the pursuit of science. You do not (cannot) know whether the intellectual effort in matters religious have anything to do with truth. Indeed, it is not all that clear that what science describes as the world has a 1:1 correspondence with what the world is "really"like. So stuff your arrogance and, when you are done, calm down! -- Best regards, Dennis J. Tuchler University City, Missouri 63130 USA