From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!pindor Mon May 25 14:05:04 EDT 1992
Article 5617 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!pindor
>From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: NI failure
Message-ID: <1992May13.155329.21787@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
References: <uetinINNco5@early-bird.think.com> <1992May9.165946.7983@waikato.ac.nz> <1992May12.170823.23059@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <77807@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 May 1992 15:53:29 GMT

In article <77807@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992May12.170823.23059@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>, pindor@gpu (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>>>Most religions think there is value in (human) life. Whether it can be
>
>>For most religions this only applies to the life of the faithfull, the ones
>>which are really God-fearing.
>
>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.
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 promi-
nence 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.
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?

>-- 
>-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)


-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca


