Ned Ludd lives on

I agree totally. Luckily, there is a society right here in St. Louis
called the "Rationalist Society of St. Louis"
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/rssl/rssl.html
I am a secular humanist, with a few transhumanist tendencies.

--- In spacesettlers@y..., "Dr. Omni" wrote:
> From:
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 8:37 PM
> Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Ned Ludd lives on
>
> [snikt]
> > Honestly though: If you want to drive her and her kind nuts, point
out
> > where the internet came from. DARPA anyone? And they should
stick by
> > their principles and not use such a heinous creation. And if they
> > hate technology so much, start walkin'.
> >
> You're assuming that those people are able to maintain logical
coherence
> between what they say and what they do; unfortunately, that is not
the case.
> It seems that they use the same kind of "selective reality
filtering" so
> popular among religious fanatics. They have a dogma do defend (or,
rather,
> to impose to normal people) and they use *every* resource in hands
to
> achieve that goal - including the ones that should be taboo
according to
> their beliefs. And so, we have luddites using the Internet to make
> propaganda, and totalitarian middle-east governments using TV (one
of the
> fruits of the decadent Western world) to brainwash their
populations, and so
> on. For them, science and technology is evil just in the extent in
which
> they don't serve to amplify their powers.
>
> As everyone here knows, this kind of fanaticism is harmful not only
to our
> dream of space colonization, but to the survival of Humanity as a
whole.
> Therefore, I think that it is also important for us, besides being
part of
> organizations related to space, be also part of organizations
pro-science,
> pro-Humanism and pro-Rationalism. In Brazil, I participate of the
Brazilian
> Skeptics Forum and of Ceticismo-BR, two embryonic NGOs dedicated to
those
> causes; I'm also considering joining the Sociedade da Terra Redonda
("Round
> Earth Society"). In the United States, there are much older and
> well-established organizations, like the Skeptics Society and the
Committee
> for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal
(sometimes
> I think that environmentalist nuts should also fall in the
"paranormal"
> category ;-). Joining such organizations, we can add political
weight to
> them and counteract those people wanting to bring Humanity back to
the