[MD] Dawkins quotes RMP on religion.

[Platt Holden]

[Krimel]
> And I would simply say, "The universe doesn't "know" anything and is
> a-moral."

I would be interested to know if you find anything false or objectionable 
in the following passages from Pirsig in Chapter 22 of Lila:

"From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world is a 
completely purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in anything. 
Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like 
machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally 
wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide. 
There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just 
functions."

"Everyone seemed to be guided by an "objective," "scientific" view of life 
that told each person that his essential self is his evolved material body. 
Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. No 
two brains can merge physically, and therefore no two people can ever 
really communicate except in the mode of ship's radio operators sending 
messages back and forth in the night. A scientific, intellectual culture 
had become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in 
little cells of psychic solitary confinement, unable to talk to one 
another, really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically 
speaking it is impossible to do so. Each individual in his cell of 
isolation was told that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he 
worked, his whole life is that of an animal that lives and thinks like any 
other animal. He could invent moral goals for himself, but they are just 
artificial inventions. Scientifically speaking he has no goals."

Thanks,
Platt