[MD] Harris and Steve

[david buchanan]

Ian said:
When DMB says he thinks Harris is wanting to get us beyond the cultural relativism, clearly he is ... but it is by recognizing the cultural basis of the acceptance of "facts" that we do so.  So where two communities bump up against such burkha / bikini disagreements they need to find common adjustments to form the agreement of the larger community - both ought to stand-up and participate in the argument. Choosing to simply accomodate / tolerate the status quo is the recipe for either total voluntary isolation or total war / enforcement. In our globalized world - total isolation is not an option.

dmb says:
Well, talking about the cultural basis of respect for facts makes a certain amount of sense in the abstract but I don't think it's much of an issue as a practical matter. "Facts" are established in courts of law every day and that happens at the international level too. Sometimes a whole community of nations can agree that certain things ought not be done, like genocide. Granted, customary clothing is not such a compelling or clear cut case, but the principle remains the same.

For several weeks now we've been hearing about how the pedophile priest scandal has now reached all the way up to the Pope himself. We've also realized that this epidemic is global and just today I learned that it goes back about 2000 years. At this point it's probably safe to say that this nightmare is part and parcel of the church. Since the Protestant clergy are not even close, it has to be related to those particularly Catholic policies toward sex, namely that you can't have any. It doesn't take a fancy degree in psychology to see that repression creates monsters. In my opinion, what they're doing is worse than murder and yet they remain outside of prison walls. Everybody knows it's the worst the kind of crime. What is this paralysis? Is it that we don't want to impose our secular values on such an ancient institution? It can't be fear of the Vatican's army. Those guys are just plain silly looking. Just one car full of clowns could probably kick their asses.  		 	   		  
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