[MD] The End of Faith

[Ham Priday]

Steve, Ron, Platt, Ian, Margaret, Marsha, et al --


 Steve said:
> The result is that we can't talk about the fundamental issue in the
> war on terror, which is faith in dogma ....

Ron said:
> I still say the enemy is intolerance, Muslim intolerance as a core
> doctrine off it's religious beliefs or whatever, it is intolerance.

Platt said:
> It is certainty of belief (dogmatism) that leads to
> trouble, whether religious or otherwise.

Ian said:
> Interestingly the agnostic/atheist distinction becomes moot,
> once you get to the point that the ontological question - the
> existence of god or otherwise - ceases to be interesting ...
> The real (ie pragmatic, rather than metaphysical) issue becomes
> what people do with professed religious faith.

Margaret said (under A Passionate Woman):
> [W]e just have to do something to empower the women
> who are in abusive situations in these other countries -
> particularly Africa and the Middle East. Places where women
> truly don't have any rights and in fact are regularly raped,
> mutilated and killed just because they are women.

Faith is belief in anything without empirical evidence, and that includes 
the MoQ which carries its own baggage of dogma.  Since even the atheist puts 
his faith in logic and common sense, I think the title of this thread is 
misnamed.  From a moralistic perspective, it isn't Faith that is evil but 
Submission.

If I were to nominate the most "Passionate Woman" of our age, it would be 
Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  On my Values Page this week, I've been running a 
transcript of a Canadian interview with this courageous activist in which 
she speaks from first-hand experience on the immorality of total submission 
and how it "keeps people in the Islamic world backward."  This page will 
change on Sunday, but you can download the original interview (with Avi 
Lewis, "On the Map") at www.youtube.com/watch .

Hirsi Ali escaped the brutality of Islam by fleeing to The Netherlands at 
the age of 23 where she learned Dutch, renounced her "faith" in Islam, 
produced a film titled "Submission" which led to the director's murder, 
became an MP in parliament with a fatwah on her life, and was recently made 
a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  How Ms. Ali responds to her 
leftist host and his allegations about the U.S. is nothing short of 
inspirational.  Although she now calls herself an "atheist", it's clear that 
Hirsi Ali has passionate faith in America and the freedom it stands for.

The value-sensibility that is the essence of man makes him a "creature of 
faith".  Let's not condemn this spiritual essence by equating it with 
theism, dogmatism, or fanaticism.

Essentially yours,
Ham