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Posted to the Gilder forum - September 3, 2000

"Fahrenheit 451 -- the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns..." by Ray Bradbury

Fay:

The last time I skipped most of your piece because I was overwhelmed by the verbiage. It was far too long. Your piece can be reduced to one sentence.

Let's go back to the good old days when they feared god.

>>>Deep thought is slow thought.

I started thinking about the god-man relationship at about the age of 6 or 8 not prodded by religious teachers but by the realities of the Second World War which happened to catch me and my family in Hungary. Fifty years later, after some serious slow thinking, I became an atheist.

To sum up fifty years of thinking:

1. Man invented god as a shield against death, against the unknown, against the unknowable
2. There are three ways to exercise power:
   1. weapons,
   2. money,
   3. fear
3. One group of power hungry individuals, the clergy, decided to control mankind through the fear of god, hell and brimstone, salvation, and Hades
4. Information makes us free and there is no better information system than the very fast Internet
5. The clergy fears that they will continue to lose control and they send the evangelist forth to put the fear of god in the soul of the unwary.
6. Fay has a Ph.D. in Evangelism.

My reply to you? No thanks, I'll take my chances backing Man, having faith in Man.

Some people will be offended by this stance. Sorry, there is nothing I can do about that. I am not trying to convert anyone to anything.

But I do want to draw attention to Fay's tactics. Carefully read her posts in this thread. The only conclusion that I can draw is that she is trying to censor me. The administration will not do it for her but she can try to shame me into silence and she can try to discredit my posts with the rest of the audience. I will let each and everyone of you decide if you like or don't like my style and content, that is your right and privilege. but I will not be silenced by Fay or anyone else.

The religious have a long history of banning and burning books. I would urge you to read;

"Fahrenheit 451 -- the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns..." by Ray Bradbury

Coda (from Fahrenheit 451)

"About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady yelling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, 'The Martian Chronicles.'"

"But, she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles?

"A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were uncle toms and why didn't I 'do them over'?

"Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped.

"Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story 'The Fog Horn' in a high school reader.

"In my story I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a 'God-Light.' Looking up at it from the point of view of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in 'the Presence.'

The editors had deleted 'God-Light' and 'in the Presence.'

You'll have to read the rest of it if interested. I just want to point out that censorship is alive and well and lurking in every corner including this forum.

Denny
"Demand creates queues.  Supply gets rid of them."

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