[MD] new blog

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

> Steve:
>> The idea is to break the taboo in the US of "questioning
>> someone's beliefs." All we are talking about is applying the same
>> conversational pressures to religious beliefs as we would to someone's
>> beliefs about leprechauns, government bailouts, the best laundry
>> detergent, and whether or not the Holocaust actually happened.
>
Platt:
> Conversational pressures? LIke what? Ad hominem attacks?

Steve:
No, like simply asking, "why do you believe that?"

I seemed to have touched a nerve with saying we should ask such simple 
questions. I suppose it is scary for those buying into a social pattern 
which says such obvious questions are in bad taste. The problem is that 
not asking those questions has become dangerous to society as we saw on 
9/11 when otherwise well-educated middle class men believed that they 
could buy their way into heaven and be serviced by black-eyed virgins 
if they became mass murderers.

My hope is that intellectual patterns which include a taste for 
evidence in support of all of our beliefs will trump the social 
patterns which hold such intellectual patterns to be in bad taste when 
applied to religion. Religious beliefs should no longer be in a special 
class of socially protected unquestionable beliefs like believing your 
wife is beautiful and your children are unusually talented. We can no 
longer afford to extend such nod-and-smile social courtesy when 
religious beliefs have become a threat to civilization itself.


Steve:
>> BTW, for someone who opposes relativism, claiming that no belief is
>> better or worse than any other is a strange thing to say, but it does
>> seem to be typical of conservatives to complain about moral relativism
>> while promoting intellectual relativism.
>
Platt:
> I believe some beliefs are certainly better than others. My point was 
> that
> I am not so arrogant as to believe I couldn't possibly be wrong. Nor 
> do I
> believe others should believe they are like gods and thus privileged to
> force their beliefs on others.

Steve:
Who believes that they can never be wrong?

And what do you mean when you keep saying that someone is trying to 
force beliefs on another?

I'm just saying that we need to have conversations about religion even 
if it makes some people uncomfortable. That's it. I think that's all 
any of us are saying. No one is suggesting that we need to tie people 
up and have them renounce their gods at gun point. We just want 
religious beliefs to enter the marketplace of ideas.


> Platt:
> As for moral relativism -- that all behavior is equally moral -- I 
> believe
> that's wrong. My moral beliefs follow the MOQ.
>
> Do you think morality applies to beliefs?
>
Steve:
Of course. Aren't intellectual patterns also patterns of value?

Regards,
Steve