Knight of Buddha
12-02-2006, 12:40 PM
From Wikipedia
Conversational intolerance
Harris freely admits that he is advocating a form of intolerance, but not, as he puts it, the kind of intolerance that led to the Gulag. Rather he is arguing for a conversational intolerance, one in which we require in our everyday discourse that people's convictions really scale with the available evidence. He feels that the time has come to demand intellectual honesty right across the board, and ignore the prevailing taboos and political correctness which, in his view, appear to prevent us from openly criticising religion.
Harris observes that these are the rules which seem to apply to every other field of knowledge. He notes that we are rarely admonished simply to respect someone's views on, say, physics or history; instead, we both demand reasons and expect evidence. Anyone who so fails to substantiate their viewpoint, he suggests, is quickly marginalized from the conversation on those topics. So Harris believes that the tolerance afforded to the spectrum of competing religious ideologies comprises a double standard which, following the events of September 11, he feels we can no longer afford to maintain.
Many of you know the now quite popular and often loathed Sam Harris. He has two best-selling books out right now; "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." Harris does in fact advocate a certain degree of intolerance.
But we must ask ourselves...Is this really a bad thing? Especially when dealing with religious extremism. I mean dialogue just does not work with people who want a world theocracy and would like to eliminate an entire ethnic group. :confused:
Harris feels that all around tolerance makes it more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism. He sees respect for faith as a major obstacle of ridding the world of extremists.
Agree?
Conversational intolerance
Harris freely admits that he is advocating a form of intolerance, but not, as he puts it, the kind of intolerance that led to the Gulag. Rather he is arguing for a conversational intolerance, one in which we require in our everyday discourse that people's convictions really scale with the available evidence. He feels that the time has come to demand intellectual honesty right across the board, and ignore the prevailing taboos and political correctness which, in his view, appear to prevent us from openly criticising religion.
Harris observes that these are the rules which seem to apply to every other field of knowledge. He notes that we are rarely admonished simply to respect someone's views on, say, physics or history; instead, we both demand reasons and expect evidence. Anyone who so fails to substantiate their viewpoint, he suggests, is quickly marginalized from the conversation on those topics. So Harris believes that the tolerance afforded to the spectrum of competing religious ideologies comprises a double standard which, following the events of September 11, he feels we can no longer afford to maintain.
Many of you know the now quite popular and often loathed Sam Harris. He has two best-selling books out right now; "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." Harris does in fact advocate a certain degree of intolerance.
But we must ask ourselves...Is this really a bad thing? Especially when dealing with religious extremism. I mean dialogue just does not work with people who want a world theocracy and would like to eliminate an entire ethnic group. :confused:
Harris feels that all around tolerance makes it more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism. He sees respect for faith as a major obstacle of ridding the world of extremists.
Agree?