[MD] a-theism and atheism

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to dmb:
You know, the funny thing is that those who pride themselves for being "outside" the wall mistakenly think that they themselves are not behind an "immune system" of some sort, that it only us damned interlictials that suffer from being behind an immune system.


dmb says:
Funny? Again, you are much, much nicer than I am. I'd characterize these "outsiders" as preposterous and ridiculous, which is to say they have it exactly backwards and their objections are only meant as ridicule. In that quote, Pirsig is asking the Oxfordians to give me and Ant a fair hearing. He says we "deserve the careful, open-minded attention that early proponents of any idea need" because the MOQ "is still in its infancy". He's asking the academic insiders to listen to us and in that sense we are the outsiders. Ant was the first in the world to get past that immune system. That's no small feat, one that inspired me to change my whole life. That's not small either. But the anti-intellectual crowd turns that on it's head, as if Ant and I didn't go to Oxford to put ourselves into heart of the lion's den. 

Anyway, thanks again for being so sane and so gracious about this stuff.