--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > - In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > "You said something revealing in a previous post, that > we have "erred on the side of" not suppressing religion > and of not being uncivil to religionists." > > First I was just pissed when I read this since it is not what I meant. But > then I found the quote and understand why you thought this: > > Me > > > So I believe that we have erred on the side of allowing > > > unchallenged beliefs about how life works rather than > > > suppressing them or acting uncivilly to religious people > > > in this country in the last few decades. > > You > > "Erred"? My goodness, I hope that's a figure of > > speech. > > Poorly written and not what I intended.
Curtis, I know what you intended to say. In the figure- of-speech sense, we often use "erred on the side of" when the "error" is clearly a positive, which is the way you used it. There wasn't anything wrong with the way you wrote it. <snip> > So let me be clear. I am never advocating either being > uncivil to any group of people in society or suppressing > beliefs. This is bad. My point was that the subconscious can prompt us to use figures of speech that reveal more about what goes on down there than we consciously intended or possibly were even aware of, along the lines of a "Freudian slip," although there's no actual mistake involved. You've said over and over that you want to "challenge" religious beliefs, that we as a species should "shed the last bits of superstition," that we are "trying to rise above superstitious tribal beliefs." Would I be wrong to say you would be happy to see all religious belief eliminated? When you talk about "challenging" a religious belief, do you not mean *defeating* it? It doesn't advance your goal if the challenge is unsuccessful. There's a fine line between defeating a belief and suppressing it. And when you challenge beliefs on the basis that they're "absurd," you can hardly call that being "civil" to the folks who hold them. I'm very dubious about the possibility of ever eliminating "superstition" (in the sense you're using the term as well as the usual sense). I think "challenging" beliefs is rarely successful; it more often provokes hostility and leads folks to dig in and hang on even more tenaciously than before. I think there's a certain personal fulfillment in demonstrating to one's own satisfaction that someone else's belief is "absurd." I think that's why it's so appealing. I've spent plenty of time doing it myself. But I'm very uncertain that it has ever resulted in any positive change in behavior, much less in eliminating the belief itself.
