From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V11 #210 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Sunday, June 30 2002 Volume 11 : Number 210 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Ace of Bass [glen uber ] Re: TUATARA [glen uber ] Re: TUATARA ["Maximilian Lang" ] Re: Even more afield in the Pledge ["Mike Runion" ] Re: wanky electric fretless things ["Gene Hopstetter, Jr." ] Re: wanky electric fretless things [Terrence Marks ] Re: more Godtalk (delete at will) [Eleanore Adams ] Re: more Godtalk (delete at will) [Eleanore Adams ] cleaning with pledge [drew ] Re: no time to think of clever subject line [Ken Weingold ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 11:57:50 -0700 From: glen uber Subject: Ace of Bass Jeffrey earnestly scribbled: >On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Eb wrote: > >> His name is Pino Palladino. His credits include Townshend's White >> City, as well as stellar albums by Celine Dion, Howard Jones, Michael >> McDonald, Peter Cetera and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Peter Cetera couldn't be bothered to play bass on his own album? So what the hell was he doing with Chicago all those years? It's not as if "The Glory of Love" had a more difficult part than, say "South California Purples" or "I'm A Man". >Isn't he the guy who plays all those wanky electric fretless things Yeah. He played on "Boys of Summer," "Everytime You Go Away," "No One Is To Blame" and pretty much anything else that had a fretless bass in the 80s. - -- Cheers! - -g- "Youth is a marvelous thing. What a shame to waste it on children." - --George Bernard Shaw glen uber =+= blint (at) mac dot com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 11:59:27 -0700 From: glen uber Subject: Re: TUATARA Maximilian earnestly scribbled: >Justin Hayward(Chills, Luna) Is this a different Justin Hayward than that fronts the Moody Blue Hairs? Are they related? - -- Cheers! - -g- "In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are Consequences." - --R.G. Ingersoll glen uber =+= blint (at) mac dot com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 15:29:23 -0400 From: "Maximilian Lang" Subject: Re: TUATARA >From: glen uber >To: Maximilian Lang , feg shui >Subject: Re: TUATARA Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 11:59:27 -0700 > >Maximilian earnestly scribbled: > > >Justin Hayward(Chills, Luna) > >Is this a different Justin Hayward than that fronts the Moody Blue Hairs? >Are they related? > >-- > >Cheers! >-g- > >"In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are >Consequences." >--R.G. Ingersoll > >glen uber =+= blint (at) mac dot com LOL, I meant Justin Harwood! _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 16:48:19 -0400 From: "Mike Runion" Subject: Re: Even more afield in the Pledge > Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 00:16:22 -0400 > From: " FS Thomas" > Subject: Even more afield in the Pledge > > Atheism is foolish, philosophically untenable position, and I take it for > granted that most people who say they are atheists mean to say they are > agnostic. It's one of the fundamentals of Western philosophy: you can't > prove a negative. "I KNOW there is no purple sparkly orb with a thousand > eyes somewhere in the Universe. I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of it." Ah, the old "X is true, because I can't prove that X is not true". For the deist, X = "God exists". For the atheist, X = "A godless universe exists". For the agnostic, X = "screw this crap and hand me a beer". 'Tis true, from a scientific persective, you can never prove a theory; you can only disprove a theory by finding one instance where the theory doesn't hold. In one case, the atheist says "hey, show me one tiny scrap of evidence that God exists, and then I'm with ya, man". In the other, the deist says "hey, show me one tiny scrap of evidence that God doesn't exist, and then I'm zoning with ya, dude." It just seems that that tiny scrap of evidence that all can agree upon is a tad elusive. Not to say it won't show up one day. Reminds me of that snippet from Hitchhikers about the Babelfish. Both atheism and deism are creamy chocolaty faiths, and the proof just isn't in the pudding. But to call one, and not the other, "foolish" and "philosophically untenable", well, that's just...uh...foolish and philosophically untenable. At least that's how it seems to me. Agnostics of the world unite. Where's the bottle opener? Mike R. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 15:57:38 -0500 From: "Gene Hopstetter, Jr." Subject: Re: wanky electric fretless things >From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey > > > His name is Pino Palladino. His credits include Townshend's White >> City, as well as stellar albums by Celine Dion, Howard Jones, Michael >> McDonald, Peter Cetera and Jennifer Love Hewitt. > >Isn't he the guy who plays all those wanky electric fretless things - like >on a couple of not-so-good Gary Numan albums from the '80s? Maybe you're thinking of Mick Karn, who did play his rubbery, fretless bass on Numan's "Dance" LP. He was also a member of Japan and Dalis Car. I couldn't imagine Mick Karn playing with The Who, either. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 18:32:25 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: wanky electric fretless things On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, Gene Hopstetter, Jr. wrote: > >Isn't he the guy who plays all those wanky electric fretless things - like > >on a couple of not-so-good Gary Numan albums from the '80s? > > Maybe you're thinking of Mick Karn, who did play his rubbery, > fretless bass on Numan's "Dance" LP. He was also a member of Japan > and Dalis Car. No, I know about Mick Karn - I like him better as a bass player. Who they really should've got, which would've made things interesting indeed, is... Paul McCartney. Long-shot - I mean, he just got married 'n' all - but I think that would be *very* interesting. Not to mention sell loads of tx. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Some see things as they are, and say "Why?" ::Some see things as they could be, and say "Why not?" ::Some see things that aren't there, and say "Huh?" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 16:49:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: wanky electric fretless things Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > Who they really should've got, which would've made things interesting > indeed, is... > > Paul McCartney. > > Long-shot - I mean, he just got married 'n' all - but I think that > would be *very* interesting. > > Not to mention sell loads of tx. Well, the live halves of The Beatles and The Who _DO_ now complement each other dead halves...get Ringo too!!! I know, don't give anyone any ideas. I assume they got Palladino because of his past working relationship with Townshend -- did he maybe play with Townshend or even Daltry on a solo tours, so as such he knows the parts (or can easily re-learn them)? ===== "This week, the White House says President Bush meant no disrespect when he referred to the Pakistani people as 'Pakis.' But just to be on the safe side, White House staffers have cancelled his trip to Nigeria" -- Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt . Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 20:21:44 -0400 From: Terrence Marks Subject: Re: wanky electric fretless things Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > > On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, Gene Hopstetter, Jr. wrote: > > > >Isn't he the guy who plays all those wanky electric fretless things - like > > >on a couple of not-so-good Gary Numan albums from the '80s? > > > > Maybe you're thinking of Mick Karn, who did play his rubbery, > > fretless bass on Numan's "Dance" LP. He was also a member of Japan > > and Dalis Car. > > No, I know about Mick Karn - I like him better as a bass player. > > Who they really should've got, which would've made things interesting > indeed, is... > > Paul McCartney. > > Long-shot - I mean, he just got married 'n' all - but I think that would > be *very* interesting. > > Not to mention sell loads of tx. I say Sean Lennon. Played bass for Cibo Matto on tours. If that doesn't prepare you for being in The Who, I don't know what does. Not that they should replace Daltrey with Miho Hatori. Not just yet, at least. *gets the cool shoeshine* - -- Terrence Marks http://www.unlikeminerva.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 20:35:02 -0400 From: "Maximilian Lang" Subject: Re: wanky electric fretless things >From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey >>Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 18:32:25 -0500 (CDT) > >On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, Gene Hopstetter, Jr. wrote: > > > >Isn't he the guy who plays all those wanky electric fretless things - >like > > >on a couple of not-so-good Gary Numan albums from the '80s? > > > > Maybe you're thinking of Mick Karn, who did play his rubbery, > > fretless bass on Numan's "Dance" LP. He was also a member of Japan > > and Dalis Car. > >No, I know about Mick Karn - I like him better as a bass player. > >Who they really should've got, which would've made things interesting >indeed, is... > >Paul McCartney. > >Long-shot - I mean, he just got married 'n' all - but I think that would >be *very* interesting. > >Not to mention sell loads of tx. And while you're at it we can take the surviving rythym section of the Beatles and unite it with the surviving Whos and have The Whotles(Dad would have to give Zach the boot). Max Max _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 21:41:51 -0400 From: shmac@ix.netcom.com (Scott Hunter McCleary) Subject: the 4th, Zevon and everything... >it should be manditory that you breed with at least one strange foreigner. Too late! ;-) Re the version of Werewolves of London/Los Angeles: Is your 45 a live version? I seem to recall a live version of the song where he used those lyrics. Also was the version where his road manager came out and told the audience to, "Get up and dance! Get up and dance or I'll kill ya -- and I have the means!" If memory serves I have that on tape at the end of Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. I will have to dig it out. ========= SH McCleary Prodigal Dog Communications PO Box 6163 Arlington, VA 22206 shmac@prodigaldog.com www.prodigaldog.com www.1480kHz.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 21:45:20 -0400 From: shmac@ix.netcom.com (Scott Hunter McCleary) Subject: Or was it... Now that I've hit the send button, I think that the live version of Werewolves was on an album that had a live version of Poor Poor Pitiful Me (during which the road manager made the forementioned threat). Great now you're going to have me digging through my big box of cassettes downstairs all night. ;-) ========= SH McCleary Prodigal Dog Communications PO Box 6163 Arlington, VA 22206 shmac@prodigaldog.com www.prodigaldog.com www.1480kHz.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 14:25:15 +1200 From: grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan) Subject: The Ox, bassists, and Yoruba >Gonna miss ya, ya big Ox. Gonna blast my Tommy CD tonight. John's playing on >"Tommy Can You Hear Me?" is amazing. try "Dreaming from the waist" off '...by numbers' (especially the fadeout) if you want to hear Entwistle at his finest. >Can he just go back to doing solo work? Empty Glass is ace. true. But Psychoderelict isn't. >I think Claypool and Clarke might be on my list, but I'd have to say >there are a few others up there as well. In no particular order: >McCartney, Victor Wooten, Nick Lowe, Stuart Hamm, Graham Maby, Larry >Graham, & Tony Levin. since I seem to have inadvertently started a thread, I'll add Colin Moulding, Mark King, Percy Jones, and (can't resist some NZ content, even if he's as kiwi as I am) Nigel Griggs. Natalie Jane ti so oro; awa nkawe >>Yoruba (sp?)... I took a class from the guy who "invented" Kwanzaa, >> >Maulana Karenga, and it sprung from a pan -African religion, Yoruba, > >Yoruba is a Nigerian ethnic group. See >http://65.107.211.206/post/nigeria/yorubaov.html for more info. I assume >the guy named the religion after the ethnic group. presumably so. Yoruba is probably the largest ethnic group within Nigeria. It certainly isn't a pan-African religion, unless one has been named after the ethnicity (FWIW, one of my dad's work colleagues was Abayomi Oshin, who IIRC was Yoruba). James James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand. =-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= .-=-.-=-.-=-.- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-. -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= You talk to me as if from a distance =-.-=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time -=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 22:42:27 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: more Godtalk (delete at will) On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, FS Thomas wrote (actually, quoted): > Atheism is foolish, philosophically untenable position, and I take it > for granted that most people who say they are atheists mean to say they > are agnostic. It's one of the fundamentals of Western philosophy: you > can't prove a negative. "I KNOW there is no purple sparkly orb with a > thousand eyes somewhere in the Universe. I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of it." And yet, given the lack of evidence for any such thing (purple etc.), and given what we know of physical laws (if by "orb" you mean something like "planet" and not just "fancily referred-to round object"), the odds are so vanishingly small that such a thing does exist that most people would have no trouble saying no, it doesn't exist. They would probably not trouble themselves with the philosophical quibble of its teensy-weensy chance of actually existing. It's only in the context of such philosophical quibbling that people suddenly become very careful about normal rules of evidence...as if, in daily life, someone asked you, "did the sun rise in the east this morning?" and you replied, "well, I can't be certain: I didn't actually witness it doing so," or "did the fellow who disappeared behind the right side of that barn over there, and then showed up on the left side a few seconds later, walk behind the barn? or did he dematerialize, teleport to Jupiter, build himself a 1939 Ford pickup truck, then rematerialize himself on the left side of the barn?" and you said, "could be - I can't disprove it." In other words, assuming that more credit should be given to the proposition that God exists than that multi-eyed purple orbs exist is already a religiously based presumption. Another way to look at this: no, we can't prove a negative as such...but consider the question of, say, Bigfoot: how is it that such a large creature could exist, yet there be no evidence of its habitats, food sources, scat, remains, etc., for thousands and thousands of years - even when people go out looking for it with the prospect of making big bucks when such evidence is found? The lack of evidence itself is a strong suggestion that there's no such creature as Bigfoot. If you define "God" as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being with a personal relation to humanity (pretty much the standard religious definition - take away any of those attributes and you have something considerably less Godlike), what evidence is there for the existence of such a being, other than people's wanting it to be so? Plus, there's the existence of Styx. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::I feel that all movies should have things that happen in them:: __TV's Frank__ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 04:08:52 -0000 From: Subject: the ever-touring who <<> I dunno. I read where Townshend wasn't too keen on touring until > the last one he did, which was motivated by his wish to help > friends with their "personal and financial situations". Pete can > continue to support himself with royalties that the others don't > share. Could he be carrying on for Roger's sake? <> Around the time that they "reunited" initally in 89, it was bruited about in some of the press that Entwistle in particular was in somewhat bad shape financially, namely, that the upkeep on his country house was sending him into hock, and that cashing in might be a good idea. Pete then somewhat reluctantly agreed. Townshend, of course, still gets most of the publishing biz, and of course there are the solo records and at that time in 80s, hell, he had that day job editing at Faber & Faber, so no surprise he was better set. But yes, Entwistle wasn't in all that good a shape, financially or physically. Somebody on one of the GBV-oriented lists to which I subscribe talked about bumping around clubs in L.A. over the past few years and running into Entwistle occasionally. According to his report, Entwistle was unbelievably gracious to those who'd approach him for a little starf---ing, but it was painfully evident that the years of hard living had caught up to him: he was halfway to total deafness, his skin looked awful, and he was heedlessly drinking himself to death while trying to pick up women almost 1/3 his age who had no idea who The Who were, much less John Entwistle. This whole thing's nothing but sad...the Who were my favorite band for most of my young life, too. The ex-girlfriend of one of my college mates had a job with the touring company of the Tommy Broadway show back in '93. She was the "guardian" and schoolteacher of the four children (two boys, two girls; two aged 4, one 10, one 11) who played Tommy in the production. I met up with her during the Dallas run in October of that year -- regardless of who tacky the idea of staging _Tommy_ might've been, it was a very entertaining show, and the band was nothing short of fabulous. She said she'd met Pete Townshend a couple of times (he was terrific with the kids, who called him "Pete" and had very little idea who he was), once when he introduced the kids to Mikhail Baryshnikov. And no, they had no idea who he was either. Marshall np Flaming Lips, the new one. Yes, i'll be lining up on the 16th, $20 bill in hand. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 21:20:28 -0700 From: Eleanore Adams Subject: Re: more Godtalk (delete at will) You mean the Band Syx On Saturday, June 29, 2002, at 08:42 PM, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, FS Thomas wrote (actually, quoted): > > >> Atheism is foolish, philosophically untenable position, and I take it >> for granted that most people who say they are atheists mean to say they >> are agnostic. It's one of the fundamentals of Western philosophy: you >> can't prove a negative. "I KNOW there is no purple sparkly orb with a >> thousand eyes somewhere in the Universe. I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of it." > > And yet, given the lack of evidence for any such thing (purple etc.), > and > given what we know of physical laws (if by "orb" you mean something like > "planet" and not just "fancily referred-to round object"), the odds are > so > vanishingly small that such a thing does exist that most people would > have > no trouble saying no, it doesn't exist. They would probably not trouble > themselves with the philosophical quibble of its teensy-weensy chance of > actually existing. It's only in the context of such philosophical > quibbling that people suddenly become very careful about normal rules of > evidence...as if, in daily life, someone asked you, "did the sun rise in > the east this morning?" and you replied, "well, I can't be certain: I > didn't actually witness it doing so," or "did the fellow who disappeared > behind the right side of that barn over there, and then showed up on the > left side a few seconds later, walk behind the barn? or did he > dematerialize, teleport to Jupiter, build himself a 1939 Ford pickup > truck, then rematerialize himself on the left side of the barn?" and you > said, "could be - I can't disprove it." > > In other words, assuming that more credit should be given to the > proposition that God exists than that multi-eyed purple orbs exist is > already a religiously based presumption. > > Another way to look at this: no, we can't prove a negative as such...but > consider the question of, say, Bigfoot: how is it that such a large > creature could exist, yet there be no evidence of its habitats, food > sources, scat, remains, etc., for thousands and thousands of years - > even > when people go out looking for it with the prospect of making big bucks > when such evidence is found? The lack of evidence itself is a strong > suggestion that there's no such creature as Bigfoot. > > If you define "God" as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being > with a personal relation to humanity (pretty much the standard religious > definition - take away any of those attributes and you have something > considerably less Godlike), what evidence is there for the existence of > such a being, other than people's wanting it to be so? > > Plus, there's the existence of Styx. > > --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey > > J e f f r e y N o r m a n > The Architectural Dance Society > www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html > ::I feel that all movies should have things that happen in them:: > __TV's Frank__ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 21:24:26 -0700 From: Eleanore Adams Subject: Re: more Godtalk (delete at will) forget that post - I accidentally hit my send w/o completing. I have nothing to say or add. My brain is fried. I have been studying tooo long. My thumb is broken - try typing with a broken thumb - it sucks....I broke my thumb 4 weeks before the CA Bar. At least it is on my left hand (I am right handed) e On Saturday, June 29, 2002, at 09:20 PM, Eleanore Adams wrote: > You mean the Band Syx > On Saturday, June 29, 2002, at 08:42 PM, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey > wrote: > >> On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, FS Thomas wrote (actually, quoted): >> >> >>> Atheism is foolish, philosophically untenable position, and I take it >>> for granted that most people who say they are atheists mean to say >>> they >>> are agnostic. It's one of the fundamentals of Western philosophy: you >>> can't prove a negative. "I KNOW there is no purple sparkly orb with a >>> thousand eyes somewhere in the Universe. I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of >>> it." >> >> And yet, given the lack of evidence for any such thing (purple etc.), >> and >> given what we know of physical laws (if by "orb" you mean something >> like >> "planet" and not just "fancily referred-to round object"), the odds >> are so >> vanishingly small that such a thing does exist that most people would >> have >> no trouble saying no, it doesn't exist. They would probably not trouble >> themselves with the philosophical quibble of its teensy-weensy chance >> of >> actually existing. It's only in the context of such philosophical >> quibbling that people suddenly become very careful about normal rules >> of >> evidence...as if, in daily life, someone asked you, "did the sun rise >> in >> the east this morning?" and you replied, "well, I can't be certain: I >> didn't actually witness it doing so," or "did the fellow who >> disappeared >> behind the right side of that barn over there, and then showed up on >> the >> left side a few seconds later, walk behind the barn? or did he >> dematerialize, teleport to Jupiter, build himself a 1939 Ford pickup >> truck, then rematerialize himself on the left side of the barn?" and >> you >> said, "could be - I can't disprove it." >> >> In other words, assuming that more credit should be given to the >> proposition that God exists than that multi-eyed purple orbs exist is >> already a religiously based presumption. >> >> Another way to look at this: no, we can't prove a negative as >> such...but >> consider the question of, say, Bigfoot: how is it that such a large >> creature could exist, yet there be no evidence of its habitats, food >> sources, scat, remains, etc., for thousands and thousands of years - >> even >> when people go out looking for it with the prospect of making big bucks >> when such evidence is found? The lack of evidence itself is a strong >> suggestion that there's no such creature as Bigfoot. >> >> If you define "God" as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being >> with a personal relation to humanity (pretty much the standard >> religious >> definition - take away any of those attributes and you have something >> considerably less Godlike), what evidence is there for the existence of >> such a being, other than people's wanting it to be so? >> >> Plus, there's the existence of Styx. >> >> --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey >> >> J e f f r e y N o r m a n >> The Architectural Dance Society >> www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html >> ::I feel that all movies should have things that happen in them:: >> __TV's Frank__ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 22:28:38 -0700 From: drew Subject: cleaning with pledge > From: " FS Thomas" > > Yet another side of the Pledge debate I'm listening in > on > > (reprinted expressly without permission) [this Carl person wrote...] > Atheism is foolish, philosophically untenable position, Of course, it isn't. At worst it is the positive belief that there is no god and thus is no more foolish than any religion you care to name. It has nothing to do with "proof." Personally (because I KNOW you were wondering) I've considered myself agnostic for a long time, and am only lately beginning to think of myself as tending toward atheism. I think I'm more certain that we don't and possibly can't know the nature of god than that there isn't one, but because I'm also pretty convinced that god bears no resemblance to a human being in mind, body, or substance, I doubt I would even recognize god if I saw it. Maybe that's pantheism of a sort, believing that the substance of the universe itself is in some way divine, but then to me divinity is more like an unknowable asymptote than an entity. When you say you're an atheist people assume you're incapable of a sense of wonder or spirituality, but I just think it means you figure prayers are silly, like letters to Santa Claus (only worse, because someone usually reads the latter if you're lucky). Speaking of not believing in god, I find that there are still four rather prominent figures in the history of white rock 'n' roll by whom I own no records, whose canon I have yet to crack. They are: The Rolling Stones, who have written several songs I enjoy but have never moved me to purchase; Neil Young, whose voice and manner annoy but who must have done SOMETHING I'd like; The Who -- and what happens here is that a song will come on and I'll hate it and then later I'll find out it was the Who, and I can't figure out why this supposedly incendiary band leaves me so cold; and the Kinks, who have influenced approximately 60% of my favorite bands at least but whose own music just doesn't excite me in the least. Still, I have faith (!) that at some point in my listening career I will crack these nuts, because if it happened with Dylan and the freakin' Beach Boys (who still piss me off a lot of the time), it can happen with these four. Oh, I left out Elvis, whom I like but just don't listen to. Comments? Advice? Recommendations? Drew ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 01:43:34 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: no time to think of clever subject line On Fri, Jun 28, 2002, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > on the other hand, INXS, now touring with some guy at a state fair near > you. not that I necessarily fault them for it (nor really care about INXS). I think I have seen Echo and the Bunnymen in every incarnation. Echo, Ian solo, then Echo without Ian. I wasn't sure what to make of them without Ian, but I won the tickets, so what the hell. They were actually very good, doing an incredible cover of 2000 Light Years From Home. - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 04:12:46 -0400 From: "Poole, R. Edward" Subject: RE: more Godtalk (delete at will) Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey: >> In other words, assuming that more credit should be given to the >> proposition that God exists than that multi-eyed purple orbs exist is >> already a religiously based presumption. I was all geared up to run with this one, until I reached: >> what evidence is there for the existence of >> such a being, other than people's wanting it to be so? ...which I think understates, or overlooks, something interesting, something I find compelling yet elusive, as much as I've tried to work it through. I don't know if I can do justice to the kernel here, but my own nascent atheism broke down somewhere in this territory years ago, so I can't help but take a swing. Just for the moment leaving god out of this discussion, I just can't accept as a general proposition that people manufacture belief in the sense I understand you to suppose. It doesn't make sense for belief to operate in that way. In order to form a desire that a given proposition be true, one must first harbor a suspicion (at a minimum) that it is false. If this were not the case, there would be no purpose served by willing a conviction into existence; it would already exist. (how it got there is another matter) So if this is true (please show me where I've gone off track, if I have, because I've tried shaking those foundations myself and found them solid), the belief-making process must be one of erasing those suspicions from one's consciousness. Only when you've gotten rid of those will what you have left form a true belief. If those suspicions remain, you could say that you have a set of working assumptions or something, but not a belief. This doesn't mean that an established belief is vulnerable to any challenge that isn't susceptible to conclusive refutation - the mere proffer of an alternate proposition that falls short of being a demonstrable impossibility doesn't rise to the level of an actual doubt. At most, that may define the contours of an actual doubt, should later evidence be presented to provide some justification for entertaining one. This discussion clearly needs some flesh on its bones, so I'll take one of your examples: "did the fellow who disappeared behind the right side of that barn over there, and then showed up on the left side a few seconds later, walk behind the barn? or did he dematerialize, teleport to Jupiter, build himself a 1939 Ford pickup truck, then rematerialize himself on the left side of the barn?" and you said, "could be - I can't disprove it." I may have picked badly here, as there may be some demonstrable impossibilities in play, but let's assume not. If I am the one who holds the belief that the fellow did, indeed, walk behind that barn, your challenge to me that he may have taken the scenic detour around Jupiter is not enough to create an actual doubt capable of challenging my belief. As you said, my inability to prove that the Jupiter trip didn't happen is not significant to the structure of my belief system. It is not, to borrow a term from another context, a reasonable doubt. I function perfectly well every day, unshakeable in my fundamental beliefs, despite my ability to invent these kinds of pseudo-doubts all day long. The situation changes, of course, if while he is behind the barn I see flashing lights, hear bizarre whooshing noises, feel the hairs stand up on my arms and legs as if in the presence of a powerful EMF, and so on. So, to return to the hypothesized man who can will desired beliefs into existence, what happens when he squares off against his suspicions that his desired proposition is untrue? Let's give him something to believe for a moment. He's married and he desires to believe that his wife is faithful to him. When he goes to turn his wish into a belief, he realizes that he suspects her of trysting with his best buddy during the office Christmas party. Now, for our wannabe believer, there seems to me to be only two possibilities: (1) our hero could marshal the evidence necessary to show that his doubt was either mistaken (after watching the camcorder tape of the party, he sees that his buddy got it on with his wife's sister, who was wearing the same cute Santa's elf costume he wife had on that night), or, in reality, a pseudo-doubt (perhaps his "doubt" that he has been staying up at night worrying about is based on the fact that his wife and buddy were alone together in the kitchen for 90 seconds and, knowing the kind of lover old buddy is, that would be sufficient opportunity in a strictly physical sense. If our hero can get past his pathological jealousy for a moment, he'll come to see that the chance that both his wife and his best friend had the capacity for such cruelty, had the nerve or stupidity to try to have their illicit quickie in the middle of a dinner party attended by 50 people and, what's more, even if they satisfied all those conditions, he'd have to believe that they wouldn't even have taken simple measures to avoid being seen (why wouldn't wife announce that she needed to get 2 cases of beer from the garage and ask buddy to help her carry them, while she goes to show him their location in the dark space?) - well, it pretty much adds up to the Jupiter detour and he'll soon see that); and, (2) despite solid & reasonable evidence that contradicts his would-be belief, he drives his suspicions from his conscious mind with such aplomb that by the end, they are simply not present for him to access and, thus, cease to be a challenge to his desired belief and ... presto! instant belief, right? Well, no. There's a name for this, but it isn't creating a belief, it's called repression and denial. And it's pretty unhealthy. So, to bring god back into the story, if you assume that "faith" in god's existence is no more than a matter of belief manufacturing based upon a wished-for proposition, which one of the two methods do you think the faithful employ to banish the doubts? Is it #2? Do you believe that all "Believers" are hopelessly in denial, are pathological self-deceivers who create a fantasy world to block out the harsh realities of the world-as-it-really-is and, what's more, they do it so well that they don't even know that they did it in the first place? Yeah? I'll admit to having considered the possibility myself, in one of my (obviously) deeply cynical periods, but I thoroughly reject that now. I've met too many well-adjusted, earnest, thoughtful and self-aware people of "faith" that I just cannot believe this one. If that's where you are coming from, well, there's not a lot of arguing with that, I guess. I don't think for a moment that you hold this belief, however. So, is it # 1, then? Did each of these people find some way of proving, once and for all, that the doubts that they held prior to their belief creation process, were all just pseudo-doubts or, even more exciting, were demonstrably false? If the latter, give me some of their phone numbers, because there's a slew of questions I want to ask 'em. To me, that's enough to prove that the belief in god is not - at the very least is not to any large extent - a matter of believing what one wants to believe. Shit, I WANT to believe in god, I think that would be a spiffy state of affairs, particularly if he/she/it is really what I've heard about all my life. I think the inescapable conclusion is that there is something else at work here and, to my mind, the actual existence of god is not an insignificant hypothesis for explaining the observed phenomenon (in terms of the belief structure of god's faithful, that is). I happen not to think that's the most likely explanation, but that's why I consider myself agnostic. What else might be in play here? I'm not sure (I guess I just said that with 'agnostic,' eh?), but my best explanation is that humans need to believe in god more than they want to believe in god. Again, I don't know why this would be so, but it seems to me that it is. Perhaps the evolution of consciousness - if that's the way it happened - necessitated that some of the big issues be offloaded from the individual human because our cave men forebears would otherwise have been paralyzed by the enormity of comprehending their place in the universe. Something along these lines certainly explains the prevalence of theist cosmology through-out human culture, but it does little to explain modern belief (except as some vestigial epistemology that will eventually fade from the gene pool). Apart from being a bit insulting (and I'd wager many would find that a significant understatement), that concept doesn't do much to explain why theistic beliefs haven't been winnowed down to a few heavily fortified bunkers trying to ward off the all-out offensive that's been raging since the Enlightenment. Sure, there's been some decline in religious fervor in the West, but the import of that observation might be no more than a winnowing of the herd during a harsh winter, as the old and sick succumb to the adverse conditions. (and I'll bet that's kinda offensive, too, but I mean it nicely. ;) So some of the on-the-fencers went over to the other side, so what? You science-is-king types have been doing a hard sell for 300 years, of course there's going to be slippage! That proves nothing. And, really, it doesn't. The funny thing is, I am a firm believer (in every sense) in Occam's Razor. But, it seems more and more to be a double-edged blade, maybe even one of those cool triple-action types with the one that grabs your beard while the other two shave so close it's almost like you got a wax job. But, in a bunch of thought experiments, I find myself thinking that god might be the more reasonable explanation - so just why is it that the nuclear weak force is set as a natural law just precisely where it must be for matter to exist? Maybe there were a near infinite series of bangs & crunches until a nice, stable universe was created that didn't wink itself out of existence within the first 1/10(-264)th second of history. Sure, that coulda happened. Or, maybe some designing force knew that was the right natural law to create and just did it. I don't know, I'm just the agnostic in the corner, but sometimes, not always, but sometimes it seems like it is science (especially modern physics) that is proposing the scenic detour around Jupiter, while the god crowd is all "He just walked behind the f*ckin' barn, can't you see that?" - -ed ============================================================================This e-mail message and any attached files are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above. This communication may contain material protected by attorney-client, work product, or other privileges. If you are not the intended recipient or person responsible for delivering this confidential communication to the intended recipient, you have received this communication in error, and any review, use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, copying, or other distribution of this e-mail message and any attached files is strictly prohibited. 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