People with Good intentions do the biggest
harm
Is that a fact? Or a statement? Can you pull out the examples to
show what you mean or is it just jargon to support your case? At a
moments notice I can pull out a far longer list of evils that had
been done by people having no intentions or evil intentions, and
they seem to have done far larger harm to humanity then people with
good intentions.
And also I cannot be certain what you are suggesting.
You are saying perhaps that we should not hold 'good' intentions of
any kind, and instead rely on sheer logic and facts to make our
choices. Fair enough, but then again what drives us to use this
approach? We cannot be motivated to use this approach unless we are
sure it is better or more good then the rest, and in using them it
is for the 'better' good of humanity. Yet again we have just pushed
back the instance of good intentions for others back, but never
divorced it at all. In fact one is arguing in a circle.
And there is still a question of how to consider facts and why we
should consider them that way.
[quote]faith and conscience had its day; while we cannot say that
it is no longer needed, Competence and Logic. and
by extension, education in critical thinking is the way forward.
Hmm, I hope you realize what you are saying, which is just another
way of saying 'competence of conscience'. A man does not set traps
in the cellar if he does not believe that there are any rats in
there, but he does if he does believe. That is a competence of
exercising basic conscience.
It is not my belief that logic can be divorced from conscience...
in fact looking into all our conscience-promptings one can see a
higher logic. In fact it is often conscience that serves as a help
against lower-logic functions. For example I may have a logic to
preserve my own life from any risk but yet there is another logic
(knowing I am a strong swimmer) to save a man from drowning. Now
what is the more logical choice?
It seems that the sense of conscience guides me to choose between
my logics, as a kind of buffer against basic logical reasoning by
appealing to a higher reasoning that I cannot decern, but yet is
entirely logical.
It would be dangerous to suggest that higher logics are of no
consquence to us if we cannot percieve them, which is the same as
saying that if we have no inking of the law of gravity at all it is
quite alright to jump off a building.
Unfortunately what sometimes one is suggesting that there should be
no decider of our actions beyond what we can observe. Which would
be very dangerous. If I view man as just a raw material, and many
of my instincts of right and wrong subject to change because they
are just instincts... then anything could happen. I could quote a
few great examples.
My beef with religion is that it is clinging on to dogma. Worse
of all, dogma developed thousand of years ago; for daily
living
I am never sure if Christianity was meant to be lived out on
dogma... is that an effect of humans or the faith itself? True
Christians in a sense I have yet to seen to be the kind that are
domgatic about anything, and the truths they cling to are because
of personal conviction (like you suggested as a way to live life)
instead of 'because the church said so'.
And unfortunately if one studies paleontology, you will know there
is plenty of dogma in science as well. In fact sometimes very few
'scientific' people actually pratice the true scientific method
(until some revolution comes about), but does it falsify the whole
concept of science? The existence of dogma seems to me an inherent
part of the human psyce to generate absolutes more then that which
are actually there, but in no way the generation of imaginary
absolutes decry the existence of real absolutes.
To me what this means is that you work it all out for yourself
first and foremost. Get your life in order. Crystallize in your own
head what you believe and what is the basis of your beliefs. If you
are depenent on logic and evidence... that is good for daily
living; but if you are dependant on logic and evidence in your
belief in God, forget it my friends, there is a more excellent
way.
I hope this addresses both your posts.
[/b]
Hmm... I might be tempted to poke a few apparent holes in your
shining example of the excellent way, but I might like to leave it
up to you to think about it, honestly perhaps. 
Where do you get this notion of excellent from? Yourself? From where
is it derived? If the whole world really lives like that what would
happen? And more importantly would we have a right to say anything
about that.
Do men need to appeal to a higer law above themselves? I still
believe the answer is yes.
