--- Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
...
> FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is
> not a problem,...
And who decides what is a 'false' belief? Do the
religious leaders of harm-doing 'believers' educate
them that their action is 'false'? Do the US
protestant leaders condemn the zealots who kill the
abo\rtion performing doctor or bomb trhe clinic?
Do Muslim leaders instruct the terrorists that bombing
and hostage-beheading gets them "to hell"? Do the IRA
get negatrive instructions from their priests? Was the
Inquisition labelled 'false belief, or the puritan
burning of witches? Was the shunning for out-of-faith
marriage of a daughter deemed false belief by a rabbi,
or an Amish pastor?
Fundamentalist zealots are by the millions,
enlightened private persons a handful and not the
'leaders'.
Faith IS a problem because it lifts the personal human
responsibility for destructive deeds and puts them
into a transcendental (maybe misinterpreted)
authorization.
Nobody accepts that his 'faith' is false.
(And I extend it into 'political' faith as well, be it
nationalistic, proletarian, plutocratic, or else).
You are right, you ARE over-optimistic.
John M
(experienced in fighting against diverse zealotry)
>
> Le 06-juil.-06, � 07:38, Norman Samish a �crit :
>
> > Anyway, all this is beside the point I wanted to
> make, which is that
> > True Believers, whether Muslim, Christian, or
> heathen, cause harm,
> > destruction or misfortune, and are therefore
> evil.�
>
>
> I am not so sure. Perhaps I am just over-optimistic
> but I would say
> FALSE Believers cause harm, destruction ... Faith is
> not a problem, and
> someone who as genuine faith in some fundamental
> value will not try to
> impose it or to institutionalize it. I would say
> that it is mainly
> those who have "bad faith" who will try to impose it
> to others if only
> to convince themselves. Something like that.
> For exemple, I separate more and more christianity
> from its "roman"
> abuse.
>
>
>
>
>
> > �
> > My principal question is this:� Is this evil
> inevitable in intelligent
> > life?�
>
>
> Yes. More generally it is the "fate" of any
> Universal Machine to
> discover some form of "evil" (type of lies), or the
> possibility of
> "evil", when just introspecting herself deeply
> enough. But it is
> exactly for that reason that there is no reason to
> be fatalist with
> evil, there is a possibility to learn to handle it,
> not with universal
> medicine, but with time, work, ...
>
>
>
> > I suspect it is.� And when life gets intelligent
> enough, and evolved
> > enough, it figures out how to make A-bombs and
> other WMDs.� Then it
> > may exterminate itself or, as you suggested, use
> up the raw materials
> > accessible to it�- and this explains Fermi's
> Paradox.
>
>
> Hope they are less fatalist speculations about that
> ... But, given the
> few we know, perhaps you are right. I guess other
> explanations are
> still possible yet.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
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Received on Fri Jul 07 2006 - 17:59:00 PDT