> From: William Beaty ...
> Hey, take a look at the thingy I built for a local > art gallery: > > http://amasci.com/art/pondmach/pond3.html Nice "Thingy" William! > > I was kinda hoping for Thomas Malloy to post an > > answer, but being the biggest zealot it's painfully > > clear his hand is the emptiest. > > Heh. People who are absolutely certain that they know > the truth are quite irritating to all of us who really > know the truth. (Is that a Mark Twain quote wrongly > remembered?) Setting Mr. Twain aside might I suggest that there is much we can learn from Mr. Malloy. It's not so much about coming to terms with or accepting Mr. Malloy's belief system. It's about acquiring a better understanding of what motivates Mr. Malloy to have acquired the rigid-like belief system he currently follows for it seems quite likely to me that he would feel utterly terrified and lost in this world if he were to suspect there existed a flaw in the intellectual/philosophical boundaries he has constructed and barricaded himself within. Acquiring a better understanding of what is going on here may prove to be crucial for the survival of our planet depending on how prevalent such rigid-like belief systems are through out the rest of the world, regardless of what which religion may have spawned it. I suspect the kind of philosophical rigidity that Mr. Malloy has revealed within Vort may be more prevalent than a lot of us wished it was. If Mr. Malloy is listening in (and I suspect you have been) this message was not meant to patronize you nor treat your beliefs like they were a collection ideological curiosities that need to be dissected into meaningless fragments by of a bunch of secular humanist social scientists. On the other hand, there are individuals within this discussion group who have sincerely attempted to reach out to you, to help you walk through the barriers you have surrounded yourself within. They do this not because they think it is some kind of a conspiratorial contest being done at our expense to see who possesses the biggest testicles in some perverted macho attempt to destroy your cherished beliefs. Some have reached out to you in an attempt to help you survive certain beliefs they perceive as having trapped you rather than freeing you. Because in the end we really are all from the same family - and family members stick by other family members in the best way they can. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
