[MD] The End of Faith

[Platt Holden]

HI Margaret, 

Your wrote:
> Beliefs on the other hand (to me), are composites
> of what a person has experienced up until 
> that moment and their beliefs are very unique
> to that individual. I think its too easy to say that just because
> you can dance circles around someone intellectually
> that your belief is superior/or has more quality than
> theirs. 
> 
> If you can question someone's belief system
> through some means - conversationally, in a classroom, through
> a book - when a person is receptive
> to want to have their system questioned (such as at
> your dinner party) then yes, that is interesting - but what
> if you are wrong? what if, with all your intellectual
> hoops that you can jump through - you are still wrong? 
> I've seen this to be the case also. All the intellect in
> the world doesn't make some things correct.  

Excellent point. There is a danger of intellectual level hubris when we 
believe we have a final definitive explanation of who we are and who we 
should be. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin warned that applying science and 
reason to human affairs too often leads to totalitarianism. "A sense of 
symmetry and regularity, and a gift for rigorous deduction, that are 
prerequisites for aptitude for some natural sciences, will, in the field of 
social organization, unless they are modified by a great deal of 
sensibility, understanding and humanity, inevitably lead to appalling 
bullying on one side and untold suffering on the other." Berlin urged us to 
beware of  "men possessed by an all embracing vision."

Those who think they know how others should think are the ones to watch out 
for. As you wisely observe, "All the intellect in the world doesn't make 
some things correct." 

Platt