[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
That is an admirable sentiment, but I don't believe it's realistic.
I am sure you didn't mean to patronize here.
We can't and shouldn't believe the best of a Saddam Hussein, for example, or an Adolf Hitler, or a Joseph Stalin. These are people who have committeed truly evil acts. At a lower level, how can we have positive regard for a paedophile who rapes and kills very young children? We might want to look at his upbringing, and we might identify terrible things that were done to him that caused his violent feelings, but we still cannot have a positive regard for him - to understand the cause of evil is not to condone it or excuse it. I disagree with the saying (was it Voltaire?) "to understand is to forgive".I think you misunderstand what is meant by positive regard. it i does not mean to love or like. It means to treat with respect, as another human being. It means to treat humanely, for not to debases US! Having positive regard for people does not mean to condone their behaviour. it does mean not to hold hatred in our hearts for that debases us too.(and I speak as a long term childhood victim of peods and violence)
it isn't. Xtians do not teach this. Car Rogers, a pyshologist, was one person who put forward this as an idea tho iwas rather surprised it needed someone to do so!
I think it's a hang-up of Christianity that we're expected to have positive regard for all in virtue of their humanity.
What's so special about humanity that we're not allowed to condemn human beings out of hand?
I happen to think we're a remarkably stupid species.
On the one hand, we can send people to the moon, perform miraculous medical feats, write stunning literature, produce brilliant philosophy. But on the other hand, we dip people into acid baths because they don't agree with us. We condemn the Third World to poverty and terrible illness, because the Catholic God doesn't want them to use condoms or have abortions. We make women cover their entire bodies including faces lest any passing man be "corrupted" by their bare skin. We kill people because they're witches. And so on.
I agree.
I don't think it is lack of intelleigence. i thinknit is fear based and a hunger for power(again fear based).
This is all evidence of a profound lack of intelligence, in my view, made worse by our potential to be exactly the opposite.
I don't like Christianity either, but at least it's now virtually powerless,
excuse me? Have you heard of the USA?
at least in the West, with even many of its priests admitting they don't believe in god.I ahve noit heard of a priest say this. i ahev heard some intelligent priests say the reject the virgin birth, the notion that Jesus was god, and all manner of other things. I have yet to hear one reject the idea of God. thos of course I ahve heard those who reject the idea of God as a 'big mand weilding a stick'.
bw
colin
Sarah At 8:59 PM +0000 01/07/2003, colin wrote:I do believe that we ought to have positive regard for eveyone regardless of anything other than their humaness.
