From: rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: BofA and UW can now support discrimination against blacks and Jews
Date: 14 Sep 92 15:35:57 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rescorla for himself.

In article <1992Sep14.064059.20019@bmerh85.bnr.ca> dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
>In article <1992Sep13.060423.9569@cs.yale.edu> rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>>What do you mean by "should"? If that's a moral claim, I'd ask you
>>to substantiate it.
>I don't have to substantiate it because it's part of my theology.
Ok. So it's axiomatic for you. This means that we have nothing to discuss.

>>My objection to the Christian belief
>>system is in the premises, not the logic structure. I think
>>that the premises are basically well founded. In some cases,
>>the logical derivation of the rules from the premises is excruciatingly
>>good.
>I'd be fascinated to see some of these so-called well founded premises,
>and one or two of these so-called excruciatingly good logical derivations.
Oh, this was terrible writing on my part.
Sorry, I think that the premises are ghastly and wrong. I think that
sometimes the derivations are pretty good. Can't generate any offhand.
Does this matter? It seems like a side issue to me.

>I don't think that platitudes such as the GR have much use in a
>discussion of morality.  It may provide a useful working rule, but
>it seems quite useless logically.
This is what I have been maintaining all along.
I'm glad we agree.

>  I think that to show that bigotry
>is wrong, we'd first have to agree on some details of how a healthy
>society should function, and then show that irrational hatred is
>detrimental to those goals.  My idea of utopia includes a population
>that is rational and sane.  That bigotry is something to be avoided
>falls out easily from that.
Hmmm...
Yes, I would agree that that follows. But I'd say that you
have just elaborated a reasonably complex system, which is what
I said I thought you would need to get gay rights as a theorem.

>>Because if we establish(or permit to remain established) the premise
>>that the government can decide how people can live their lives, the
>>next person who's life it decides to control might be me.
>
>Ah.  So can we accept as an axioms that totalitarianism and fascism
>are to be avoided?
No, they're theorems.
And I'd phrase them as "I would rather not have totalitarianism or
fascism." You see the difference?

>>In fact, it's already coming after me, and I don't like it much at
>>all.
>Why don't you prove to your government that it shouldn't be coming
>after you?  Hopefully you and it will agree on axioms.
Low probability of it being effective.
I disagree with my government as to axioms. One of it's axioms seems
to be that it is a good thing to tell me how to live.
My strategy--and I believe a rational one--is not to tell my government
what I'm doing that it doesn't like.

-Ekr




-- 
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Eric Rescorla, DoD#431 (Nighthawk S)              rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu
Former chemist now CM400 mechanic                 ekr@eitech.com(preferred)
                       I will hack Unix for food.