[Vision2020] Are you enabling extremism?

[Paul Rumelhart]

Sorry I missed most of this conversation, I can't (shouldn't, I guess) 
access my email from work.

I see from later posts that you are referring to ALF and ELF.  I would 
propose the tree-spiking that Earth First!ers have done as a better 
example.  For those who don't remember, that involves hammering a spike 
into a tree that is likely to be cut down by loggers so that it will 
cause havoc when it goes through the sawing machinery, possibly maiming 
or killing those running the machines.  That action has a more 
straightforward goal in mind that involves injury and/or death.

The difference is that ecoterrorists are not routinely raised from birth 
not to question their beliefs.  They do not hold the epitome of 
unquestioning (faith) to be a virtue.  They do not have a tome that they 
are told is God's Word that describes punishments that sometimes involve 
death for various categories of people.  Ecoterrorists individually 
become extremists on their own, not through a tradition of learning that 
endorses the eschewing of fact and the adoration of blind subservience.

I don't think that Richard Dawkins is trying to make the point that all 
extremists are religious.  I think he's trying to say that a subsection 
of society that promotes turning your back on fact and evidence in favor 
of unquestioning obedience to an idea that is supposed to be higher than 
the rule of law is in fact dangerous for society, even if most of the 
individual members of that subsection of society are in fact quite nice 
neighbors to have a beer with, and wouldn't harm a hair on your head.

Paul

Kai Eiselein, editor wrote:
> I think Dawkins is focusing his energy on just one point rather than 
> looking at human nature as a whole.
> Whenever dogma, be it religious or political, is taken to the extreme, 
> it is a dangerous thing.
> There are polical groups on both the left and right that are willing 
> to kill, yet have no religious motivation. Most notably on the left 
> are extremist environmental groups that engage in eco-terrorism. Using 
> Dawkins line of reasoning, anyone who is environmentaly friendly could 
> be seen as supportive of eco-terrorism.
> Any belief, taken too far, can result in fanatical zealots willing to 
> kill anyone opposed to their viewpoint.
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andreas Schou" <ophite at gmail.com>
> To: "Paul Rumelhart" <godshatter at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Vision2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 11:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Are you enabling extremism?
>
>
>>> So by treating faith as if it was a good ideal, it enables 
>>> extremists to
>>> use it for almost any purpose they care to name.  So, are you enabling
>>> extremism?
>>
>> In terms of what I actually believe to be objectively true, I'm more
>> in line with Dawkins than I am, for instance, with Keely. However, in
>> terms of what I believe to be *correct*, in terms of ethics, I'm far
>> more in line with Keely than I am with Dawkins.
>>
>> Dawkins doesn't believe he has to prove that reasonable ethics are
>> better than unreasonable ethics. That may seem like a flip
>> observation, but I've seen no indication that it's better to construct
>> your ethical system based on reasonable, rather than unreasonable
>> principles. Either way, most people seem to get to roughly the same
>> answers.
>>
>> If ethics were a function of reason, rather than some deeper, more
>> automatic function of the human mind, then one would expect that a
>> greater capacity for reason would correlate strongly with a greater
>> capacity for ethical behavior. I haven't ever seen that to be the
>> case.
>>
>> -- ACS
>>
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>
>