Nice quote, I think that Sam's point is that the line has been crossed in society from "mind your own business about my personal beliefs" to a need to challenge the type of beliefs that is supporting some pretty hideous actions. There are too many tribes of monkeys for this to work but it makes me feel sane to see these issues raised. Today some car bombs killed 71 in Baghdad. Does anyone else think that the guys who did it believed that this action would be rewarded in heaven? In fact I'll go further, these guys "knew" this fact was literally true so compellingly that they bet their lives on it. Think of the congruence of a belief that would allow you to calmly drive to a public area and ignite a bomb. With all of our social programming not to kill each other, they "knew" it was the right and moral thing to do to blow innocent people to bits. The clusters of beliefs that had to be in place to make this happen, against the natural instinct for self-preservation is mind boggling! We have watched people oppress women because it was their right to religious freedom and the religious moderates said we couldn't attack their beliefs protected by the concept of "religion". Now it is time to say "I don't care where you got this idea,, scripture, mystical experience or tradition, it is barbaric and wrong. In most cases slippery slope arguments are so lame, but in this case we are already all the way down the slope!
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "tomandcindytraynoratfairfieldlis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > curtis writes snipped: > At first I thought I just disagreed with you > about what we can be confident about in our knowledge from subjective > experience, but then I felt like you were making a different > distinction concerning how we form our own beliefs. It is quite a > vigerous dance with a lots of stomped toes! > > Tom T > As Byron Katies asks, How do I know any of this is true? >
