http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opini ... ef=opinion
Sean Butler wrote: Apparently, this article by the Dalai Lama in today's New York Times is getting ripped into on the blogosphere for being naive drivel. Radical atheists like Sam Harris are the primary reason I'll never become anything more than an agnostic. They condemn religious people for attributes they themselves possess, almost t...o the point that it defines them: intolerance, hatred, fanaticism and demagoguery to name but a few. Looking at the comments on Harris' Facebook page, it's amazing how deep down the rabbithole some people are, and how completely they lack self-awareness.
Not only is it the height of irrationality and arrogance to assume you know the answer to probably the most important question in the history of the human intellect, but the belief that, just because atheists don't fly planes into buildings, they are not (a) wrong or (b) dangerous is precisely what makes them so wrong and dangerous in the first place. In some senses, intellectual wars are more pernicious than physical ones, not only because ideas can out last human bodies, and not only because the former can cause the latter, especially where morally absolutist viewpoints exist, but because there is more than one type of oppression. Misuse of the privilege that is freedom of speech to cause harm is a violation of the very reason that the principle exists.
Just because institutionalised and extremist religion has caused uncountable levels of suffering on humanity down through the years, it does not follow that all religion is bad and more importantly, that all religious people are evil, or that religion as a very concept is so terrifying that it must be destroyed (or if it is, there are not other, potentially more scary absolutist ideologies that do not equally deserve our attention). We forget so quickly from where our morality derived, and for some, religion is a path to inner peace that cannot be achieved by reasoning about this cold, uncaring world. Secularism teaches us that because there is no knowable means of achieving the divine (or pure happiness, the modern equivalent), everyone should be allowed to find their own path, whether that be through humanism or spirituality. Liberty bases itself on the principle of "live and let live", and harms should be curbed where they occur. Religion doesn't kill people, extremists do.
Discourse requires give-and-take, a willingness to listen and more importantly, a willingness to move position. Resorting to mockery and dismissal of the very people you are trying to convince with "reason" and "logic" is not only laughably hypocritical, but is also terrible strategically. The world is going to be changed by absolute force, either physical or intellectual, and every moderate who has ever rejected extremism will tell you that. Ultimately, I suppose it's not unsurprising that a message from a holy man about mutual understanding and tolerance would fall on such deaf ears.
Is it becoming a situation where people who harp on about religious freedom/domination within society and proposition of absolutes in society are becoming that which they detest?
