[ExI] The mosque at Ground Zero

[John Clark]

On Aug 9, 2010, at 8:50 AM, Keith Henson wrote:
> 
> It's not *useful* to point out that religions are illogical.

Why not?! Most people think religion is logical and moral and that error has caused centuries of grief. Most people, apparently even most people on this list, think that religion is the one human activity that should be completely immune from criticism and any violation from this social norm proves the violator to be a profoundly immoral person.

Just today in an editorial Jaron Lanier in the New York Times makes the tired old claim that Transhumanism is really a religion and then proceeds to savagely attack it; proving he doesn't believe his own argument. Lanier wouldn't robustly attack Islam in a popular newspaper in a million years. Why, because he thought Islam was more logical than Transhumanism? Of course not. It is very clear that despite what he said Lanier thought one thing was a religion and one thing was not and one thing was immune from criticism and one thing was not.

> Their very existence is due to psychological mechanisms that (in appropriate
> circumstances) induce irrational behavior because (in the stone age)
> such behavior, irrational and harmful to the host as it is, helps genes to propagate.

I don't care, ITS 100% IRRELEVANT!! 
>  
> But the history of war is replete with people doing things that were irrational.

Very true, and the most irrational was pretending the very obvious threat staring them in the face wasn't there.

> Working ourselves up into a frenzy and taking irrational actions

Pointing out the truth is not irrational and you haven't even tried to make the case that I am in error in what I say, just that some truths should never be uttered because its bad public relations.
> 
> isn't nearly as effective as working out rational approaches to dealing with the problems.

But you admit you have no solution to the problem of Islam, rational or otherwise. Yes, you have a nice theory as to what caused the problem, but even if it's true it's of academic interest only because it helps you not at all in finding a solution. I don't know how to solve the problem either but I do know how to make it worse, pretending there is no problem.

  John K Clark


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