Hi Platt,
Platt:
I agree. If someone finds value in believing in God, leprechauns or a
rabbit's foot, who is to say they are wrong other than those who
believe
everyone should believe what they believe and try to force their
beliefs on
others by ridicule, intimidation or at the point of a gun? Freedom to
believe is just as much a value as freedom to choose.
Steve:
Who is to say that someone is wrong in holding a belief? We all do that
all the time about beliefs so long as they are not religious beliefs.
That's why people generally don't hold crazy beliefs. There are of
course nut jobs with all sorts of conspiracy theories. But no one
hesitates to call people on such irrational ideas, so such nut jobs are
few in number. The idea is to break the taboo in the US of "questioning
someone's beliefs." All we are talking about is applying the same
conversational pressures to religious beliefs as we would to someone's
beliefs about leprechauns, government bailouts, the best laundry
detergent, and whether or not the Holocaust actually happened. Those of
use who do not believe in leprechauns and gods have little doubt that
if there is a culture shift where freedom of religion no longer means
that religious beliefs are free from the usual conversational pressures
on our beliefs then religious people would be few in number.
BTW, for someone who opposes relativism, claiming that no belief is
better or worse than any other is a strange thing to say, but it does
seem to be typical of conservatives to complain about moral relativism
while promoting intellectual relativism.
Regards,
Steve
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