It was and is not my contention that your belief is interchangeable with the Taliban. The very fact that we have been engaged in a discussion shorn of any personal rancour speaks volumes to that end. All I have said was that your earlier post as written had the same religious rigidity as the teachings of hardline mullahs.
I have no interest in asserting that the beliefs of any religion is better than any other. I have little fear or interest in such arcane matters as life after death. In any case, even if it turns out that you are right and I find myself with no place in “heaven”, I would certainly find myself in the company of my friends and family. I personally cannot think of any other place I would rather be.
I rarely enter into a debate with anyone on matters regarding faith. I have little or no interest in questioning the beliefs of others as long as what they do does not directly affect me. A debate on Christianity was not the aim or the point of this thread.
You are obviously an intelligent and well read person. I must admit that it took me by surprise that a person with your knowledge actually sees things so sharply in terms of black & white something that I who see mainly shades of gray cannot identify with.
Your strong belief on freedom of thought is both refreshing and troubling at the same time. Refreshing because it shows a not very common ability to separate deeply felt personal beliefs from a more general acceptance of freedom for contrarian thoughts of others. Troubling because if it is so difficult to persuade a person of your intellect to be a little less rigid in your thoughts, what chance do we have against the uneducated mullahs and their equally uneducated followers.
Thank you for your intelligent and courteous reply.
I find it surprising right back that a person of your obvious intelligence is so absolutely, positively convinced that everything must be shades of gray. Which is, oddly enough, a binary choice.
While I will agree many aspects of existence, perhaps most, are shades, many aspects are indeed a black/white binary choice: life-death, up/down, above the water/under the water, and, IMO, many aspects of right/wrong.
It is my personal belief that a recognition that the world has both binary black/white and shades of gray aspects fits reality more accurately than one that insists that everything can be ONLY shades of gray. This means that the most important issue in life then becomes determining what is binary, and what is SOG, and then of course placing the SOG issues appropriately along the spectrum.
There are, of course, a third class of people. They view everything as either black or white and are determined to force others to do the same. I believe most Islamists fall into this group. Historically, so have many Christians, sadly.
I would also contend that when “everything is shades of gray” people run up against motivated “everything is black or white” people, the SOG guys lose. Who wants to fight and die to prevent another 1% darkening of the gray tone? So the SOG people gradually lose as they are forced backwards a shade at a time.
Shades of gray people, in my experience, tend to be arrogant and self-congratulatory. I obviously exclude present company, as you have demonstrated otherwise in our conversation. But most view themselves as superior mentally and philosophically to those who see some aspects of existence as binary. The Kerry campaign, with its obvious pride in its own “nuance” is the classic example. Obama’s obvious contempt for “bitter clingers” is another.
Liberal SOG people pull a dishonest trick here. Everything conservatives believe in: country, God, sexual morality, etc. is shades of gray and therefore not important.
Everything liberals believe in: government is good, racism is bad (they get to define what constitutes racism), sex is always good (since rape is bad it isn’t really sex), etc. is black and white and beyond discussion. They are so immersed in this worldview they can’t even see the inherent contradictions.
To get back to the Buddhist/Hindu vs. Christian worldview that started our conversation. The eastern religions, in my admittedly not comprehensive understanding, tend to view existence as SOG. Christianity, in my hopefully more thorough understanding, view some things as binary and others as SOG.
It does not bother or worry me that you believe everything is shades of gray. In fact, your inalienable right to do so is one of the things I consider black/white.
Yet you seem, and pardon me if I misunderstand, to find the fact that I believe some things to be binary to be frightening and disturbing. This is, of course, why I said in an earlier post that SOG people are often, in my experience, much less tolerant, in a real sense, than people who hold the middle viewpoint that the world has both binary and SOG aspects.
I would appreciate it if you could explain to me why we have such different views of how someone should respond to another who has a fundamentally different worldview.
If this request sounds snide, I apologize. It is something I have struggled with for many years. I find that my conservative views are highly offensive to most liberals, so I keep quite about them much of the time as I have no desire to offend them. They, of course, do not reciprocate.