Asymmetrical Information

The "Dr. Manhattan" link is wrong.

Yeah, it takes me straight to a blank comments page, and won't let me out.

Here is the link.

Jane, I just read your post and the entire thread you link to in this post.

Am I correct in assuming that you're conservative (or libertarian?) based upon your many swipes at liberals? Well, I'm a liberal and I find myself in almost total agreement with you on that matter and the larger issue that you mention again in this post.

As a matter of fact, I'm not just a liberal, I'm a liberal atheist. But it often seems like I "get" the theist world-view in ways that most people — not just liberals — do not. It continually baffles and frustrates me.

You mention abortion in a comment in your other thread. I don't think that a first trimester fetus is a human life, but it occurs to me that other people might in good faith think differently. In fact, I often say that I'd rather live in a world where someone bombs an abortion clinic on the mistaken assumption that a fetus is a human life than in a world where no one is motivated to try to stop what they believe to be murder. (But since I think they're mistaken in their belief, I don't have a problem with jailing them for their actions, either.) I don't have a problem with the idea that a fertilized egg has a soul and is fully human. I think it's not true, but I can't disprove it. And I don't try to convince a pro-life person they're wrong on some other basis since that basis is effectively unassailable.

I don't resent being evangelized by fundamental Christians. I've always thought it rather noble of the people that do so in good faith. They're trying to prevent me from suffering eternal damnation. I appreciate that. I think they're wrong, but I can't prove it, and I appreciate their concern.

As a matter of rigorous rationality, I'm best described as a moral relativist. As a practical matter, I'm closer to being an absolutist. And this is where I'm quite different from most contemporary liberals (or, rather, leftists).

I'm not really afraid of morality. I'm not afraid of the fact that morality is difficult and often uncomfortable and inconvenient. I also am not afraid of the fact that morality means that people will come into conflict.

Also, by the way, I'm not afraid of deciding that some theists are no longer compatible with the modern liberal society I live within. Being tolerant of principled intolerance cuts both ways, of course; and some of my liberal principles very well may not allow me to tolerate certain theists as, at least, full members of my liberal, civil society. This is to say, we don't need to tolerate all religious beliefs, certainly not all practices, and, in fact, we don't. For the theists who want a greater acceptance of principled intolerance in contemporary American society, they may get what they are wishing for, to their dismay.

Of course, the current uberprinciple of "tolerance" is, ironically (it's been pointed out a zillion times) doing just this. I'd be perfectly okay with it if it weren't (as it is most often practiced and occasionally rationalized) so awfully incoherent and hypocritical.

I might ought to mention that my sister, with whom I'm very close, is an evangelical minister. We get along fine, and she considers me one of her strongest positive spiritual influences. This baffles everyone but us.

To my mind, the liberal incomprehension of the worldview of morally absolutist belief systems is only a particular example of an almost universal lack of a flexibility of thought. Really, most of the rigid theists have the same problem — they don't understand why other people don't see that their beliefs are principled and necessarily rigid and even not rationalisable, yet they balk at being able to see the similar validity of someone else's brand of absolutism.

Mostly, I think, it's the case that most people have a set of unexamined assumptions that are not identical to other people's unexamined assumptions and they can't imagine starting from a different set. Many, many belief systems are not even remotely isomorphic — you can't get there from here. Since most people aren't able to actually start from a place different than they always do, in the end they figure that people with other beliefs are just wacko in one way or another. Irrational. Or, just stupid.

The liberals that simply can't comprehend morally absolutist belief systems such as many theisms are working from a set of unexamined assumptions that make those other belief systems as remote as Andromeda.

And when I'm confronted by their — or most other people's — rational inflexibility, they seem to me to be just as remote.

Sorry, it's late (or early in the morning) and I've been up all night. Too rambly.

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