: : : : I don't think your nuts for advocating a position based on rationalism and research based conclusions. This has been the basis of all the huge advances in mankinds history, not only technological but spiritual and moral.: : : Rational decision-making has also been used to justify the worst sorts of exploitation and imperialism, e.g., dark-skinned Africans are inferior to whites, so we may enslave them. In other words, what's rational is often relative. As for employing rationalism to develop spirituality, which is inherently irrational -- that makes as little sense as the rest of your inane post, which I'll continue to rip apart...
: : In defense of rationalism and logic, I will point out that it is not that rationalism is relative, it is that the premises upon which arguments are based are often faulty. It may be through rational deduction that they reach such horrid conclusions, but it is not rationalism to blame, it is their premises.
: Who was it that said the observer alters the observed merely by the act of observation?
Argh!! I am now racking my brain...I am not sure if it had to do with Heisenbergs uncertainty principle or some sort of thing about studying gorillas. Anyways though, I get the meaning.
I agree with you that rationalism and logic in their pure theoretical forms are worthy tools in the process of truth finding, but can they ever be used by mere humans without some sort of corruption? We can minimize the corruption through rigid objectivity, but still...what the hell was I talking about?
There is always going to be corruption, but then, who is to what is and what is not corrupt. FOr instance, Barry considers morality to be merely human constructs that are dictated by the economic/social relations and dialectic materialism (I am getting good at the Marxspeak!) while I believe they are absolutes based upon man's nature. His conclusion is that it is okay to have a bloody revolution and that they are exceptable measures, while my conclusion is that morality will not (should not) change over time.
Ah well, I'll leave this one up to those with the B.A.s in B.S.
