Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On 25 Sep 1999, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> You might equally well consider this for yourself. Other people
> (including other people belonging to your particular religion) might
> regard different things as offensive than you do.
>
If one is worried about how something is going to be viewed by Muslims,
Hindus, and Buddhists isn't it a good idea to ASK THEM before assuming you
know what they are going to say? This is condescending at best and racist
at worst.
I don't know about Muslims or Buddhists but I can speak authoritatively on
Hinduism. There is no basis for considering the Bible offensive.
Irrelevant maybe not offensive. Individual Hindus may disagree but that
is their personal opinion and has nothing to do with our religion.
> Just compare the two statements:
>
> 'People of religion X might find religion Y's documents offensive.'
>
> 'This is what Christians always do.'
>
Given that I didn't say that ("This is what Christians are often accused
of" has a totally different meaning.), I fail to see your point.
> And then, please, try to figure out, who should be told to stick to his
> own prejudices and stop trying to speak for other people.
>
The person who was trying to speak for others. (Hint: Not me.)
> > The criterion should be utility. The Bible as a literary and cultural
> > foundation of Western civilization will be useful to a lot more people
> > than the Anarchism package.
>
> You don't try to speak for me again, do you?
>
Nope. I'm expressing the opinion that more people will use the Bible than
an Anarchy faq. Granted I don't have scientific proof of that (except
that I've noticed millions of people interested in Christianity and
only a handful of graduate student types interested in Anarchy.) but
that doesn't mean we can't do some kind of test to see if I'm right or
wrong. How is that speaking for you?
> There's a nice (though somewhat rude) proverb in Germany about the
> validity of arguments by greater numbers like this:
>
> Shit must be something great to eat. Millions of flies just can't be
> wrong.
>
This is based on a logical fallacy. (I don't know what the Western term
is but it is hetvabhasa in Sanskrit I believe.) The problem domain is
insufficiently defined. Are we talking what's great to eat for people or
for all living thing? If just people what flies eat is irrelevant. If
all living things, than yes, shit is relatively great to eat.
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
Reply to: