From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 21:21:19 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Missionaries (was: "Mormon Asshole?" re: GAK)
In-Reply-To: <199610082308.JAA23683@mac.ce.com.au>
Message-ID: <325C76E5.6628@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Timothy C. May wrote:
> At 12:44 AM -0700 10/9/96, Dale Thorn wrote:
> >Why is it that 95-plus percent of all people stay with their parents'
> >religion (more-or-less) when they grow up, instead of abandoning it,
> >or finding one on their own?  Simple.  The uncountable zillions of
> >"bytes" of information that go into your brain before you become
> >more-or-less conscious, so controls your mind by the time you are
> >conscious, that very few people can overcome this programming to any
> >significant extent.

> This is of course not true. Lots of statistics show that nowhere near
> "95%" of people stick with the religion they were raised in. In
> America, at least.

I don't know what part of America you're talking about. San Francisco?
Most of America is still to the right of you on a map, and close to 95
percent do exactly as I say.  Maybe you got your statistics from the
same media outlet that was working the OJ case.  There, they said that
"x-percent of white people think he's guilty" (usually 70 percent or
thereabouts), while I, Dale Thorn, found it to be just about 100 percent
anywhere in the country (except maybe the Bay Area, where they still
believe that a rotten little piece of crap called the Altair was the
first personal computer).

> Large numbers become nonbelievers, others become
> Vegans, Pagans, Buddhists, Bahaiists, Baalists, etc. This is
> well-documented and has been discussed for several decades.

A lot of B.S. has been discussed for several decades.

> I don't know what the current correlation is, but I'd guess it's less
> than 50%. As the old joke goes, what's the surest way to make your kid
> a nonbeliever? Send him to a religious school.
> Nothing to do with Cypherpunks, but complete errors like this "95%"
> figure ought to be corrected, if anybody is still reading this thread.

These last numbers - "less than 50%", "complete errors like 95%" are 
splendid proofs of what I said in the first paragraph above, that most 
people (like yourself) are totally controlled by their programming.  
Unless, of course, you simply wave it all away with a magic wand.

BTW, if you understood my argument, it wasn't so much about specifics of 
religion et al (which could be easily misinterpreted), it was about how 
people act entirely on their past programming, mitigated to some extent 
by incidental circumstances.  If you're inclined to give too much weight 
to the incidental circumstances, remember the first thing they tell you 
when you join the CIA: there aren't any coincidences (of any real 
significance, anyway).