Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
That's one way to look at it.
I guess I don't see it as you do. Essentially, I'm okay with people believing any damn-fool thing they want to believe and for whatever reason they choose. Unless they encroach on me and mine. So far I have had no serious problem with any religionist anywhere except the late Osama Bin Laden. My beef with him evaporated recently.
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I certainly think everyone has a right to believe whatever they want and official repression of ideas is not good. However, the kind of culture we have is based on critical, public analysis of knowledge. People put ideas out into the public sphere and other people analyze and criticize them. If culture were to revert to claims to authority in either people, institutions or texts, the world as we know it would change radically and for the worse in my opinion.
I also agree with much of what W.K. Clifford wrote at the end of the 19th century about the ethics of belief. We have an epistemological duty to ourselves and society to critically examine our beliefs.