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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Is there a spiritual force which also effects the future?
Message-ID: <1994Sep14.234811.3343@news.media.mit.edu>
Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System)
Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <1994Sep11.164225.6753@news.media.mit.edu> <Cw3927.FDF@spss.com> <Cw4p8I.BsA@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 23:48:11 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <Cw4p8I.BsA@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <Cw3927.FDF@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>........
>>There's something about religion that makes people completely abandon
>>rationality and standards of evidence, and condemn to perdition anyone who
>>doesn't agree with them.  And that's just the effect on the *un*believers.
>>
>You surely know about an atheist ideology which did exactly the same things
>(abandon ..., condemn...) with terrible effects on unbelievers (and
>believers too). So perhaps it is not a belief in God by itself which leads
>to such awful consequences.

Could you elaborate on that, Andrzej? I presume you're speaking of the
Soviet Empire.  But my impression is that their culture never absorbed
the critical materialist culture, but retained a superstitious outlook
that did not respect rationality and evidence very much.  After all,
even I would have no objection to believing in God, given adequate
evidence.  (However, i'd still not see much reason to behave in accord
with hIS commands, except because of cowardice in the face of hIS threats.)

My favorite instance of Russian gullibility was in a movie I saw that
depicted an alleged psychic woman who was moving a pencil on a table
toward herself by sheer psychokinetic power of will.  The only trouble
was that whenever she exerted her power, and the pencil jumped a
little, you could also see her shirt button jumping too, because of
the Nylon thread.  Only a nation of wishful-thinkers who wanted to
believe in the supernatural could have applauded this clumsy
performance.  I've done it myself, but took the precaution to thread
the thread through the tablecloth, and operate it by foot.

(I know about this because I once set this trick up at a big board
meeting, with the pencil jumping toward the chairman, about 5 meters
away from me, whenever he started to speak.  It was no use.  The
chairman stared at it for a moment and then without even looking in my
direction said, "Cut it out, Minsky.")

