Margaret said: ...Ultimately, what act has more quality? Telling someone 'no, you are wrong' or saying, 'I disagree - but I can accept you for who you are'. The cream will always rise to the top anyway.
dmb says: I think this is just one of several false dilemmas. The demands of intellectual quality do not exclude compassion, the capacity for forgiveness and it does not demand that we be rude about it. It seems wrong to put it in terms of personal acceptance. It acts as a kind of emotional censorship and the debate is just not about one person granting approval to another anyway. That's more or less the thing that prompted Sam Harris in the first place. I've heard Bill Mahr joke about it once or twice too. The basic idea here is that beliefs do not deserve respect just because somebody believes it. That's just a species of the ad hominem argument. Instead, the beliefs that deserve our respect are the one's with intellectual quality. Why should a person be hurt or offended when asked to justify their beliefs (in a normal conversation, not in a courtroom) with some sort of evidence and reason? The one who feels uncomfortable about that is pretty darn likely to be skating on thin ice, belief wise, if you ask me. It's been my experience that most people very much enjoy such conversations and just the other day, at a dinner party, I was flattered and thanked profusely for it by a friend's neighbor. I realize that people can get hurt when they're talking about their beliefs, but it's soooooooooo worth it. _________________________________________________________________ Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join 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/
