Ian, Ian: I don't see how the extreme Islamists are any more at odds with intellect than the extreme (average) US Christians. Fear driven thinking. Faith in anything but our own humanity.
Mati: You are absolutely correct about the fear driven thinking, but my take on Christians in the US is that the fear is largely based on fear related to intellect dominating the social values that sustain Christianity. Christian that harbor extremist views in the US largely live in a country where their biological well being, food, shelter, work, etc. is relatively stable today and into the foreseeable future. Fear here is basically dealing with intellectual/rational reality and values that tend to be viewed as at times as "life and death" issues related to the life and death of Christian social values. When the sun sets there is very little actual life lost to this struggle of these values. This speaks to the stability of American Culture and the intellectual level in this country. Islamic extremist have the burden or blessing of dealing/creating real "life and death" issues. Here actual biological and social values are blended in such a way to propel fear and perpetuate violence under this "life and death" view of the struggle. The idea of peace without extreme Islamic domination of reality is seem as the same as death. Real Peace is really an intellectual concept which no real basis in this extremist social reality. No doubt that if all the Christians and all the Islamic folks were to trade places in the world I would suspect we would see a similar struggle emerge. Ian: Like Ant, the thing I found interesting (apart from the sheer inspiration of positive optimism in that humanity) is the US contradiction - the home of such excellent philosophical pragmatism amidst the culture of conservative denial and dogma. Ask not. Mati: On this commentary I would suggest that you have pretty much nailed it on the head. Except why ask not? It is too much fun! ;-) Take care, Mati 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/
