From: "Andrea Wheeler" <wheelerandrea-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: heaven forbid: heaven for bad
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 17:06:36 +0000


Dear Michael,
How are you? I'm sorry I've been out of touch. I've just got internet access 
at home. How do you feel about the "War on Terrorism"? How are things with 
you. I hope ypu wwill write and let me know. I know you didn't want to talk 
about andrea - but it would be nice if you did.
Love
Andrea


May the roads rise with you,
and the wind be always at your back;
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
May the rain fall soft upon your fields,
and until we meet again;
May the Lord hold you in the hollow of His hand.




>From: Michael Pennamacoor <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>
>Reply-To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: heaven forbid: heaven for bad
>Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 11:58:23 +0000
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>fellow civilised humans
>
>an interesting article from Richard Dawkins appeared in the Guardian 
>today... hope this is
>appropriate:
>
>
>
>
>Religion's misguided missiles
>
>Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause 
>disaster
>
>Special report: terrorism in the US
>
>Richard Dawkins
>
>Guardian, Saturday September 15, 2001
>
>A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on 
>the heat of a jet
>planežs exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still 
>cannot
>discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New 
>York skyscraper
>if launched from as far away as Boston.
>
>That is precisely what a modern „smart missileū can do. Computer 
>miniaturisation has
>advanced to the point where one of todayžs smart missiles could be 
>programmed with an
>image of the Manhattan skyline together with instructions to home in on the 
>north tower of
>the World Trade Centre. Smart missiles of this sophistication are possessed 
>by the United
>States, as we learned in the Gulf war, but they are economically beyond 
>ordinary
>terrorists and scientifically beyond theocratic governments. Might there be 
>a cheaper and
>easier alternative?
>
>In the second world war, before electronics became cheap and miniature, the 
>psychologist
>BF Skinner did some research on pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeon was to 
>sit in a tiny
>cockpit, having previously been trained to peck keys in such a way as to 
>keep a designated
>target in the centre of a screen. In the missile, the target would be for 
>real.
>
>The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by the US 
>authorities. Even
>factoring in the costs of training them, pigeons are cheaper and lighter 
>than computers of
>comparable effectiveness. Their feats in Skinneržs boxes suggest that a 
>pigeon, after a
>regimen of training with colour slides, really could guide a missile to a 
>distinctive
>landmark at the southern end of Manhattan island. The pigeon has no idea 
>that it is
>guiding a missile. It just keeps on pecking at those two tall rectangles on 
>the screen,
>from time to time a food reward drops out of the dispenser, and this goes 
>on untilä
>oblivion.
>
>Pigeons may be cheap and disposable as on-board guidance systems, but 
>therežs no escaping
>the cost of the missile itself. And no such missile large enough to do much 
>damage could
>penetrate US air space without being intercepted. What is needed is a 
>missile that is not
>recognised for what it is until too late. Something like a large civilian 
>airliner,
>carrying the innocuous markings of a well-known carrier and a great deal of 
>fuel. Thatžs
>the easy part. But how do you smuggle on board the necessary guidance 
>system? You can
>hardly expect the pilots to surrender the left-hand seat to a pigeon or a 
>computer.
>
>How about using humans as on-board guidance systems, instead of pigeons? 
>Humans are at
>least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier 
>than pigeon
>brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior. Humans have a proven 
>track record
>in taking over planes by the use of threats, which work because the 
>legitimate pilots
>value their own lives and those of their passengers.
>
>The natural assumption that the hijacker ultimately values his own life 
>too, and will act
>rationally to preserve it, leads air crews and ground staff to make 
>calculated decisions
>that would not work with guidance modules lacking a sense of 
>self-preservation. If your
>plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, 
>presumably
>wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining. A rational pilot 
>complies with the
>hijackeržs wishes, gets the plane down on the ground, has hot food sent in 
>for the
>passengers and leaves the negotiations to people trained to negotiate.
>
>The problem with the human guidance system is precisely this. Unlike the 
>pigeon version,
>it knows that a successful mission culminates in its own destruction. Could 
>we develop a
>biological guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a 
>pigeon but with a
>manžs resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate plausibly? What we need, in 
>a nutshell, is
>a human who doesnžt mind being blown up. Hežd make the perfect on-board 
>guidance system.
>But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients 
>might lose their
>nerve when the crash was actually looming. [Image] Could we get some 
>otherwise normal
>humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a 
>consequence of flying
>a plane smack into a skyscraper? If only! Nobody is that stupid, but how 
>about this - itžs
>a long shot, but it just might work. Given that they are certainly going to 
>die, couldnžt
>we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again 
>afterwards? Donžt
>be daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer them a fast track to a Great 
>Oasis in the Sky,
>cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldnžt appeal to the 
>sort of young men
>we need, so tell them therežs a special martyržs reward of 72 virgin 
>brides, guaranteed
>eager and exclusive.
>
>Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive 
>to get a woman
>in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the 
>next.
>
>Itžs a tall story, but worth a try. Youžd have to get them young, though. 
>Feed them a
>complete and self-consistent background mythology to make the big lie sound 
>plausible when
>it comes. Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. Do you 
>know, I really
>think it might work. As luck would have it, we have just the thing to hand: 
>a ready-made
>system of mind-control which has been honed over centuries, handed down 
>through
>generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is called 
>religion and, for
>reasons which one day we may understand, most people fall for it (nowhere 
>more so than
>America itself, though the irony passes unnoticed). Now all we need is to 
>round up a few
>of these faith-heads and give them flying lessons.
>
>Facetious? Trivialising an unspeakable evil? That is the exact opposite of 
>my intention,
>which is deadly serious and prompted by deep grief and fierce anger. I am 
>trying to call
>attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too 
>devout - to
>notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has 
>on human life. I
>donžt mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but 
>devaluing onežs
>own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end
>If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life 
>highly and be
>reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane 
>is safer if its
>hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of 
>people
>convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyržs 
>death is
>equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole 
>to another
>universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they 
>also believe
>that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of 
>the real world.
>Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, 
>sexual promises,
>and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to 
>be selected for
>suicide missions?
>
>There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a 
>weapon of immense
>power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance 
>system is in many
>respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can 
>buy. Yet to a
>cynical government, organisation, or priesthood, it is very very cheap.
>
>Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: 
>mindless
>cowardice. „Mindlessū may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a 
>telephone box. It is
>not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those 
>people were not
>mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had 
>sufficiently
>effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily 
>to understand
>where that courage came from.
>
>It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source 
>of the
>divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly 
>weapon in the first
>place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here 
>is with the
>weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic 
>kind, is like
>littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are 
>used.
>
>Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science, 
>University of Oxford,
>and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Unweaving the 
>Rainbow.
>
>
>
>The question of 'trancendence' rears its everlasting head once again. Can 
>transcendence be
>imminent (rather than immanent and extant)? at every moment? in this one 
>life, world,
>dwelling? here now (nothing after)?
>
>MichaelP


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