Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxx.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxx!ignatz
From: ignatz@ihuxx.UUCP (Dave Ihnat, Chicago, IL)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: symbiosis, exclusion, parasitism ...
Message-ID: <707@ihuxx.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Mar-84 16:20:42 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxx.707
Posted: Wed Mar 28 16:20:42 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Mar-84 00:25:35 EST
References: <681@sun.uucp>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 86


	From: kevin@sun.uucp (Kevin Sheehan)
		.
		.
		.
	<different drummer>
	
		We have seen flames regarding religion in schools,
	we have seen flames regarding religion.  There have probably
	been flames regarding things like est & zen.  Why care, who bothers?
	Who cares, why bother?
		.
		.
		.
		We have seen fortran, we have seen cobol, we have even argued
	about pascal & C.  We still look for the solution to languages, why
	don't we look for solution(s) for ways/beliefs/religions?

Kevin, the problem is that people want to meddle.  It's interesting
that you brought in the computer language debate in the same
light--you could also have mentioned the Great Editor Wars, or the
Operating Systems Schism.  All are quite similar, in one way--you're
looking for a tool to do a job.
In a language, you're looking for a powerful, clean, and efficient
way of translating your program task into executable code; in an
editor, a flexible yet simple method of entering and manipulating text
and/or program code; in an operating system, some way of apportioning
machine resources such that each user gets the most from the
environment with the least impact on other users.

So what are you looking for when you discuss religions?  A
working philosophy of life.  Something to give you guidelines for
making decisions in your life--what to do, what not to do.


However, when debating an editor or a language, you usually know from
whence it came; why its creator decided to do things that way, and
how it evolved as features or changes were added.  And, ultimately, if
you don't like it as it is you CAN change it.

A religion has to explain both the world, as it is; HOW it came to be;
and why its tenets are correct in that world.  And we can't call the
author on the phone, because getting the telephone number is/may be one of
those things the religion is supposed to answer.  So, in the course of
explaining things, deistic religions which postulate a Creator have to
take into account the fact that other religions exist, and these other
philosophies offer different guidelines, for different reasons.  They
must then be Wrong, according to this religion.  Unfortunately, here
you come to the problem.  Given the fact that ordinary human nature is
to meddle in other peoples' business, then when you consider the
common assumption many religions make--Christian or not--that their
worldview is not only Right, but ordained by a Creator great enough to
create the Universe and dictate ultimate Right and Wrong, it's not
surprising that these things are hotly debated.  And it's also not
surprising that those fired with the Will To Do Good consider it
perfectly ethical to force religious trappings wherever they can get
away with it, because it's for Your Own Good.

Sorry, there; I've tried to be objective, and slipped in the last half
of that paragraph.  But that, really, is the dilemma:  if its been 
postulated that a Supreme Being or Beings has/have handed down rules to
live by, and this is really believed, then it is easily justified
to try and impose that view on others, and to be ethically and logically
consistent in such an action.

THAT'S why the ongoing debate--others who don't share the same working
philosophy, no matter whether they have one which is also religious in
origin or derived from some other source, will object to attempts to make
them conform to your set of rules.  In the US, with the separation of
Church and State, an approach rather new to government at that time 
was taken--try to provide a reasonably safe society for all to pursue
their daily lives, without imposing any particular ethic or religion as
a precondition for this welfare.  The ideal and the practice deviated
in execution, of course; but still, there's no State Religion, so it
worked to some degree.  But, considering the favored position a
religion can enjoy if it can get its tenets enacted in secular law,
it's not surprising that the Falwells and MM'ers continue to try erode
laws enforcing Church-State separation.  (THAT's the critical
importance of the school prayer debate)

Oh, well.  Enough.  The upshot of it all is that people like me just
wish they'd leave us alone and live out their lives in the manner they
see fit; but they won't.

			Dave Ihnat
			ihuxx!ignatz