From: rmr@acsu.buffalo.edu (Richard M. Romanowski)
Newsgroups: alt.astrology
Subject: Re: Scientific Nazis (was: a new, improved proposed test, thanks to thomas david kehoe)
Date: 2 Oct 92 19:46:06 GMT
Organization: UB

kring@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring) writes:

>>rather than playing the role of
>>"scientific Nazis", persecuting any heretics who deviate
>>from whatever the current orthodoxy happens to be.

>I expect an apology for that simile.

>If you feel bullied, say so.  Call him a bully, but don't call him a Nazi.
>There is an inflation on that word anyway.

	Why is it that the Nazis, with some measure of aristocracy and
fashion sense, killed twelves million, and get to be the bogeyman, 
whereas the Stalinists kill sixty-nine million and are never referred
to as a stereotype of oppression?  

	We will, of course, pass over in silence the innumerable Amerindians
slaughtered by the good ol' U.S. of A. ....probably more than the Stalinists
and the Nazis put together, eh?

>>If you really want to develop the intuition needed to
>>gain some insight into things like yoga, astrology, and
>>so on, there are ways to do it, but unlike the materialistic
>>science you are familiar with, it requires personal involvement.
>>You can't understand it from the point of view of a detached,
>>objective observer, [..]

>Yes you can.  But if you do, you can't believe in it at the same time.

	You're both wrong.  You can test physics and believe in physics --
you can test astrology and believe in astrology.  

>>You have to have
>>certain experiences that will be outside the realm of the experience of
>>the masses, [..]

>Ah, feeling elitist today?

	How many Americans can read?  One third?  Believe me, people who
bother to think ARE an elite.  Long live literacy -- and other elites!

>By the way, that "heretics" word is again a try to push skeptics into one corner
>with the scum of the earth.  Personal attacks are the last refuge of people
>with no real arguments.

	Bullpucky.  Personal attacks are a healthful form of exercise, 
provided they're done with fists, and you help the guy up and have a beer
with him afterwards.  

	"Argument" -- since the time of the Greeks, we have glorified
argument, and we get nothing more for our pains than humorless quibbling!
Did the Egyptians and Babylonians glorify debate and proof?  No, they 
calculated and measured and were model scientists.  The Greeks loved to
sit around and bitch about who spoke the best, and their science amounted
to playing with electrostatics and stealing everything they could from more
pragmatic cultures.

	The best defense of astrology is that it works, much more efficiently
than the upstart "psychology," which is expensive and interminable and never
gets anywhere.  We cannot predict by astrology which slit the diffracting
electron will choose -- but even our best physics cannot solve that riddle --
so stop expecting astrology to conform to your petty rationalism!

	The sky holds beauties and profundities deeper than the well of
Democritus, and you'd have it squeezed into the suffocating space between
Newton and Faraday!  'Shame, sir, shame!  Your sword against a woman!'
The Muse will bless physicists as readily as astrologers, but only when you
are gracious enough to realize the finitude of human vision!

	Deepest thanks to W.S. for Othello quote
Luck
Rick
Newsgroups: alt.astrology