Are all politically-related blogs (the current thread being the exception, thankfully!) filled with such smarmy, hypocritical people?

I’ve been reading some of the other “headlines” on this site and I can’t understand how so many people think it makes any sense to condemn some politician for their [insert flaw here], while posting rude, flippant, and sometimes downright hateful comments about the people they dislike. Am I the only one who sees the blatant hypocrisy in this kind of behavior? Just wondering.

Then regarding the Franciscans, and without debating their worth (!), please recall my words, above: “That’s not to say that from our fetid imaginations no good can possibly come.” Though I still maintain that taking anything on faith is always a mistake, you are right: the facts show that error lies in wait, whichever path we choose.

I am just terribly impressed by the insane recklessness of faith, by the enormities it has produced — and I can’t think of anything at all comparable that proceeded from rational, empirical ethics. When scientists run amok (as in the Tuskegee syphillis study), it’s from moral blindness, not an excess of either faith or reason. Yet reason and spirituality dictate, IMHO, a humane ethic. Faith seldom does — witness Islam and its hundreds of millions of believers.

And as I said, the ethics of today’s Christianity and the Hebrew faith are mostly the result of Christians and Jews simply ignoring large parts of the OT. Of course we still have some Christians who believe in witches and the death penalty for those who work on the Sabbath (Ex. 31:15), curse (Lev. 24:16), or commit adultery (Lev. 20:10).

I submit that the comments here have indeed refined and expanded Bay’s criteria. This is a valuable contribution to understanding terrorism in all its forms.

Ideology plays a big role, sure. So does “cradle to grave” hate-mongering against targeted groups by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. Hatred becomes an unbreakable weave wound through every aspect of life. For excess young men, terrorism becomes a logical expression of their entire lives.

Re: your first question – No, I don’t think faith and ideology can exist independently, but then, neither can reason and ideology… as you say, ideology gives form our experience/reason/faith/whatever.

But it seems to me that therein lies the struggle: Since all human thought and activity is somehow tied together, then the path to error actually begins with thought and activity. The danger in ideology lies in forgetting this truth. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but to exist, it seems, is to be in error. And I’m not as convinced as you apparently are that “reason” will change that.

I think even a cursory look at history and human experience shows that reason is an unreliable guide. It certainly provides much that is valuable, but it also leaves us with many dilemmas and new problems. Certainly the same can be said of faith, but my original point was that faith/reason/etc become positive or negative depending upon the ideology to which they are connected.

For example, Christianity in the 14th Century not only spawned corruption and the horrors of Inquistion, etc, but also the rise of Scholasticism and the Franciscan orders, both of which are generally seen as very good things. How can the same religion have such good and bad results? Because of its connection to differing ideologies – one humble, the other arrogant.

So I guess I would change the statement you made from “whenever you have faith, there is much you can get wrong” to: “If you are human, there is much you can get wrong.” To me, that suggests we ought to include both faith and reason in living our lives, trying to keep both in perspective and avoiding the arrogance that often comes with ideology.