[Vision2020] Are you enabling extremism?

[Paul Rumelhart]

I was listening to NPR a little while ago, and they had Richard Dawkins 
on the program.  He is the author of "The God Delusion", and is one of 
the best-known athiests out there.  Part of his notoriety comes from his 
clear, direct, and usually taboo questioning of religion.

For example, in this broadcast, he expressed the argument that the idea 
of "faith" (meaning unquestioning faith) is dangerous for a number of 
reasons.  For example, it is dangerous because it teaches you to accept 
explanations without questioning them, which is anti-science.  He also 
described the argument that I'm sure you've all heard, that faith 
encourages certain individuals to commit very anti-social acts such as 
shooting abortion doctors or flying planes into the sides of buildings.  
In answer to this, the question that was put to him by the interviewer 
was: "don't you have to make a distinction between the extremist and 
everyone else"?  I found his answer intriguing.  He said that of course 
the average person of faith was a well-mannered individual that would 
never execute an act of extremism.  However, what they are doing is 
enabling extremism by putting a moderate face on it.  Not his exact 
words, but the general gist of it, anyway.  For example, a well-mannered 
person of faith might raise a child into that faith that becomes an 
extremist.  The danger as he sees it is that faith allows any act to be 
justified, no matter how cruel or how evil an act it is.  If you think 
God is telling you to do it, then, by God, you'd better do it.  This, of 
course, is not helped by the fact that the holy books of the most common 
Western religions contain passages that can be rationalized as a reason 
for murder, among other crimes.  For example, my favorite, "you must not 
suffer a witch to live".

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?

I should point out that I don't happen to be an athiest, I'm an agnostic 
on the idea of a Creator god.  I do have a problem with "blind faith", 
so I can sympathize with him here.  I also think that this question has 
a lot of relevance in this particular community.

Paul

P.S.  There's nothing like blowing whatever good will you might have 
garnered in the community with one simple post...