Stephen,
Liking Ayn Rand doesn't make his review totally bogus. He both praised and criticized the book. I thought it worth consideration. I call myself an atheist, not because I have a feeling of affection for the word. I use the word because it's not wishy-washy. Such deeply embedded dogma needs more than wishy-washy platitudes to challenge it. Whether god exists is as interesting to me as whether Tinkerbell exists. It's too silly for consideration. But the doctrine and dogma warrant a noisy challenge from all who would dare to. Marsha At 10:04 AM 1/22/2008, you wrote: >Hi Marsha, > >This guy seems to be a big Ayn Rand fan and dismisses mystical >experience out of hand. Harris has gotten a lot of flack from >atheists for his openness to mysticism. > >In a lot of this guy's critiques he seems to miss what Harris is saying. > >He wants The End of Faith to be a philosophy book, and I can relate >to his wanting a more systematic philosophy. Reading the book >through the lens of the moq, I think it holds up well. > >One of his main critiques is one suggested by Platt that reason >requires a leap of faith. > >He says, "A grave weakness of this book is that it neither >summarizes nor points its reader to an adequate defense of reason as >a means of gaining valid knowledge. Rather, the book seems to either >assume that the reader agrees with the validity of reason, that no >such validation is necessary, or worst, that no such validation is >possible. As a result, the book is vulnerable to the charge that its >author is asking us to accept -- on faith -- the validity of reason! >As I have already said, the book is quite sloppy philosophically..." > >Harris doesn't say that reason is how we "gain" knowledge, he just >says that our knowledge should stand to reason. In MOQ terms reason >is just a synonym for intellectual quality. > >In evaluating whether faith is a good or bad thing we don't need to >define what intellectual quality is or prove the "validity of >reason." We only need to say that it is bad to believe things that >are of low intellectual quality which in MOQ terms is obvious. > >When people appeal to faith in religion while they appeal to reason >and evidence in every other area of their lives, they are admitting >that what they are claiming is of low intellectual quality and then >patting themselves on the back for believing it anyway. > >Regards, >Steve > > >Moq_Discuss mailing list >Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. >http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org >Archives: >http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ >http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ ************* DEFINITION of Marsha, I, me, self, & etc.: Ever-changing collection of overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual, static patterns of value. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
