From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 9:39 PM
To: Gary Amirault
Subject: RE: atheism is caused by pride?


> As to Matt. 18:8 [see] "Bible Threatenings Explained".

As far as I can tell, you just say that "eternal" doesn't 
mean eternal.  It's not important; Christian theology is 
such a hopeless mess anyway, and it's a measure of the 
incompetence of Jesus' alleged revelation that such basic 
questions are even debatable.

> It's not near as much WHAT you write and [as?] 
> the arrogant way you write it.

You may as well say: "it's not WHAT you write, it's how I 
read it". Attached below are some excerpts from my book 
that demonstrate how baseless your charge is.

If I'm confident that my worldview can be and has been 
successfully defended, then I'm only "arrogant" if that 
confidence is unjustified, or is used to intimidate or 
insult someone.  It doesn't make me "arrogant" simply 
because my confidence in my worldview is greater -- 
or more justified -- than is YOUR confidence in YOUR worldview.

> You make it obvious you are only full of yourself by your style.

You make it obvious that you need to find any excuse not 
to examine with an open mind the comparative validity of 
our worldviews, even if that excuse involves vague, 
unsubstantiated -- and un-Christian -- disparagement of me and my "style".

> Therefore a wise man would stop right there and go elsewhere.

Yes, if by 'wise man' you mean one who dares not put his w
orldview to the test.  I, by contrast, think the foundation 
of wisdom is to test one's most cherished beliefs against 
the best criticism of them -- and alternatives to them -- 
that one can find.

brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net 

-----------------------------------------------------------

Some will regard the text as grandiose or presumptuous.  An 
assertive summary of human knowledge is necessarily grand in 
scope and must presume to make judgments. However, the reader 
should not mistake terseness for any claim to authority or certitude. 

Almost all of the facts and analyses asserted in this text have 
of course been asserted before by other humans.

No statements should be believed or disbelieved simply because 
they are offered by a particular text or author. The statements 
in this text are no exception. They should be judged only by 
whether they are consistent with evidence, logic, parsimony, 
and other truth.  Even if most of the assertions in this text 
are valid (i.e. convincing and defensible), that is not strong 
evidence that none could be invalid.

The number of possible valid human knowledge summaries no longer 
than this text is immense but finite. This text is certainly far 
from being the best possible such summary.  If the goal of 
approaching such an optimal summary is worthwhile, then an 
effective method might be to first produce a suboptimal summary 
and then to continually correct it or replace it outright with 
better ones.  Thus corrections and replacements of this text are welcome.

The truths advanced in this text may not find widespread acknowledgment 
in the author's lifetime.

Some will say that this text, so full of second-hand facts and 
personal judgments, is and will be of no importance. They likely 
are correct about the text, but not about the worldview it 
identifies and summarizes. 

I believe that a worldview of scientific positivism and libertarian 
capitalism will prevail in human thought and action in the new millennium.  
Such a future will be good, and I hope to advance it in some small 
way with this text.