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Article 5656 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: NI failure
Message-ID: <78053@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 14 May 92 15:59:11 GMT
References: <1992May13.155329.21787@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
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Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
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In-reply-to: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)

In article <1992May13.155329.21787@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>, pindor@gpu (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>>Most religions?  I'm really not sure what metric you are using here, but
>>in the one I consider standard English (discrete), I'd say your evaluation
>>is utter rubbish.

>Firstly, it seems that you lead a very isolated life.

Where do you get that impression?  *You* come up with two examples, and
assume that counts as "most religions"?  Just what metric are you using?

>Secondly, although it is true that in the last (very roughly) hundred
>years or so, the notion of intrinsic value of (any) human life has been
>gaining prominence in western (i.e. christian) religions, you can not
>treat this as representative of these religions because their existence
>spans an order of magnitude longer period of time and this tendency looks
>more like an aberation.

Again, you are assuming one particular metric and whinging based on it.
Good for propaganda, not for intelligent discussion.  You have to explain
why time is the relevant metric, and not say, head count.  There's been
an exponential growth in population, you may recall, with the mostest
being this past century.

>Do you realize, by the way, that German soldiers going into battle
>during WWII were given God's blessing (by catholic priests) to do a
>good job of killing French/Belgian/Polish soldiers, and these in turn
>were blessed by other catholic priests to do a good job of killing
>Germans?

Is this supposed to be a description of what metric you're using?  I'm
missing something.

Like I said, I think we have an NI failure here.  
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)


