> > > [Khaled] > I am wondering about something and hence my question. Didn't Christianity > go through the same stuff, and they happen to have a 600 year head start > to iron these problems out? Didn't the European monarchy see politics and > religion as one. And when did they separate? > > A good case could be made for the date when Martin Luther hammered his intellectual thesis to the door of the Church.
I could wiki the exact date but the effect of the ease of gaining information effortlessly is that I've become too lazy to utilize it at all. </irony> (Nice help, btw, DmB, I'm starting to figure it out) Personally, I have a great deal of sympathy for a religious iconoclasm arising to counter the image-based reality that has formed in the west. It just needs a bit more intellectual self-questioning and hey, I may even convert! Nah, that's not likely to happen. But what do you think happened, Khaled? I mean, Islamic leadership in the golden age was guided by high quality intellect, now it mostly seems to be centered upon demagoguery. Perhaps today's Islamist is confronted with a certain reactionary impulse due to being forced to live in a narrowing global village where the western way seems so rich and successful and all-pervading and a sorta insecurity sets in that brings with a reaction of stiffness and unyielding adherence to the old ways, when all else in the world is being gobbled by the new. And the new sucks. Everybody knows. [khaled] > Well that's the golden ticket here. Do you have to believe in God in > order for you not to steal, cheat and lie. Can you 'be good for goodness > sake', and the yule tide song says, warning you that the Elf in the red > suit is watching. > Nice. "Goodness for goodness's sake" is about as good a definition of good there is, I'd say. If God was here, I'm sure he'd approve. > The intellectual value. Now you are asking people to think for > themselves, and that is the long journey ahead. > > Ah, but maybe not. I don't think anyone is being asked to think for themselves. That would be a long journey, and an impossible one. But to think along different lines, to change thinking, that's really just a voyage of a moment in time. It's just thinking about something good instead of something bad. Perhaps the right intellectual formulation could work. Let's imagine what that would look like: You first. I'd go, but I only know a Roycean system of interpretation here, so I don't think it'd be appropriate to impose it. But somehow, somewhere there might be an intellectual formulation which can make things better rather than make things worse. John the cock-eyed optimist 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/
