John said to Arlo: I think our dialogue would go better, Arlo, if I wasn't lumped in with the bone-headed reactionary right. But perhaps that's partly my own fault for not making myself more clear. I'll try and explain myself better.
dmb says: I can certainly understand why you wouldn't WANT to be lumped in with the bone-headed reactionary right, John. But as I pointed out already, your anti-humanist stance was taken from an environmentalist who was writing about humanism from a religious perspective. You may not realize where this "ideas" are coming from but I recognize it. I can smell your breath. You talk just like textbook for the Christian homeschooling market. This 8th-grade text, America: Land I Love (A Beka, 1994, 2006), has no doubts about who the bad guys are. And one of their favorite punching bags was a pragmatist, a radical empiricist and a liberal intellectual, very much like Pirsig: "By the early 1960s, the teachings of humanist philosopher John Dewey, the father of progressive education, had permeated public education. Dewey was a leader in the secular humanist movement, which put man in place of or above God. Moral absolutes, such as those once taught in the McGuffey Readers, were replaced by humanistic ideas such as encouraging children to “follow their animal instincts” and to practice permissive “self expression” in the classroom…" "As “progressive” educators removed godly values from the classroom, America’s youth became ripe for the spirit of rebellion that moved across the nation in the late 1960s, opening the door to drug abuse and sexual immorality. As discipline, dress codes, and moral standards relaxed in the public school systems, test scores continued to decline." As you can see, these quotes from "America: Land I Love" is the same sort of rightwing religion you're pushing. Their favorite "secular humanist" punching bag (Dewey) very closely resembles Pirsig. This fact should give you pause, rigid coyote. You talk like the enemies of Pirsig's friends. What does that tell you about the relationship between your claims and the MOQ? It clearly shows that your approach is fundamental hostile to Pirsig's - and it shows that you are more or less oblivious about where your own sympathies actually come from. Last Wednesday, John said: Let's just call it "Humanism" because that's what I'm talking about.eplacing Theos with Homo. From a Theism that is rejected by science, weturn to human explanations for the world and the faith I'm talking about,is faith in intellect. Faith in intellect is not scientificallysupported. Didn't you read Pirsig's first book? I read ZAMM in the context of analyzing a book, Arrogance ofhumanism<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arrogance-Humanism-Galaxy-Books/dp/0195028902>,for logic class. These ideas are Eherenfeld's not mine, except in thesense I agree and adopted them long ago. This was part of G. Sessionsteaching method - you got Eherenfeld's critique of Faith in Humanism - as athing it itself - subject it to scientific scrutiny and you see that it'snot really a scientific faith. For instance, scientifically speaking, it's impossible to measure the ageof the universe - except that you pretend time is uniform and absolute tohuman perspective. You have to put man as the center of the universe, tocome up with that - it's a religious teaching - some simple catechism wegive to the kiddies. Not much different from Sunday school really. But while we're on the subject, most of Eherenfeld's work was upon theempirical evidence of how predictable human reasoning applied to the actualworld in which we live, has "worked out" and he makes a dismal case andeven more dismal predictions. I think his book was where I first learnedabout global warming. Anyway, there's plenty of science to support thefallacy of using science as a guide to the future. And a very big problem, a genetic defect in faith in human reason, is thatit explicitly excludes non-human nature. Since there is no more God, it'sall ours and we can do what we want with it. Not Earthism. NotEnvironmentism. Humanism. Thus applying merely human values to a complexand interwoven environment is a very big mistake. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
