(Untitled)

[oboeswinger]

Do I want people to think the way I do? I suppose I do. But I know it's never going to happen. Do I respect other people's beliefs? Shit, I don't know. There's this saying that you should respect a man's religious beliefs the same way you respect his belief that his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. Casual -- and hopefully non-

Comments

[vamessedup]

Interesting. Where did that come from?

[oboeswinger]

It's from a great book that I'm reading, called Dead Air> by Iain Banks.

[vamessedup]

Yeah, well it sounds like the author crawled inside my head and wrote down what he found there. Awesomeness!

[oboeswinger]

Haha yeah, the main character is a cynical liberal who has a lot of really interesting and provocative rants about all sorts of topics. It's a good read, I definitely recommend it.

[brys1471]

What exactly do you think of all that? Do you agree?

[oboeswinger]

I agree with most, but not all of it. I think that faith often goes too far, but at the same time it has an important place in our lives. The trouble with faith is, like Banks says, its 'unwavering uncertainty in its own infallibility,' which leads often to passing judgement over others based solely on belief structures (most recently in my mind is the question of homosexuality as sin). And issues like that are not even arguable because people of different beliefs arguing about something with such a differing basis for their beliefs is like two chess bishops on different coloured squares trying to confront each other-- they'll never meet, and there will never be a resolution as they're essentially on two different boards.

But at the same time I don't want everyone to think exactly as I do. And I know my own hypocracy, as I pass judgement constantly on cultures that would kill another in the name of their beliefs based on my own morality system. But there you go.

And you, Socrates? What do you think?

[brys1471]

I think you are right. Any kind of belief in infalability is (in my oppinion) a problem. People become so set in their ways that they stop listening to others. In my oppinion there is no 'one right way' that works for everything. People that decide they know me, through their religious beliefs, upset me. I guess I don't like or understand the idea of blind faith. Imagine if you lived that way everyday, blindly trusting everyone you met?

Singlemindedness to an extreme is BAD. Openmindedness to an extreme can be BAD. Maybe we need something in between?