Re: virus: Religious Memes

Richard Aynesworthy (overload@fastmail.ca)
Thu, 6 May 1999 14:17:00 -0400 (EDT)

> What can be done is continuing the push for rational education
> through science.

...I suppose at this point you're going to assert that science and rationality equate?

If we can show children how each myth, one by
> one, has been debunked by science and reason, it is possible they
> will reach an inevitable conclusion that all myth could be
> explained in time.

...hmmm. I think you may be suffering from a conflation of the explanatory and instructive levels of myth. Exoteric understanding of myth is by-and-large responsible for a great deal of confusion. (That's what exotericism is designed to do after all) but discounting the instructional power of myth entirely is a profound case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. ...esoteric mythicism transmits profound observational truths about the nature of the humyn experience and the capacieites of the mind. ..."rational education through science" places artificial (and arbitrary) system limits on the experience of the infinitely malleable medium.
...fewer statistics, more poetry.

This is up to the proper teaching of the
> scientific method and critical thinking skills. And us. Here.

...any informed advocacy of critical thinking skills must apply itself to an examination of the limits and biases inherent in the scientific method as well as an exploration of assumptions and errors in non-scientific rationality.
...otherwise it's not critical thinking, just advocacy.

psypher
-spiritual anarchist
(well... as long as everyone's self labelling :) )



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