Flying Jets Into Buldings

The only thing that guarantees a truly open-ended collaboration among human beings is their willingness to have their views (and resulting behavior) modified by conversation--by new evidence and new arguments. Otherwise, when the stakes are high, there is nothing to appeal to but force. If I believe that I can get to Paradise by flying a plane into a building, and I am content to believe this without evidence, then there will be nothing another person can say to dissuade me, because my leap of faith has made me immune to the powers of conversation.

--Sam Harris

My take is that Sam's statement has they same kind of value as chanting "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." To trust in the good will of others much less ourselves is beyond naive. It is fatuous and dangerous. Dialogue and skepticism is not enough either. Such attitudes underestimate the resiliance of people to change their core values and beliefs and to defend those values and beliefs with every tool as their disposal. Flying jets into buildings is merely the logical extension of deeply seated beliefs that we scarcely can comprehend, using rational-- not irrational-- actions to advance those beliefs. If there is hope, it lies with taking as a given the depravity of humanity, and to accordingly create institutions that promote transparancy and accountability, divide and diffuse centers of power, and protect and promote secularism, pretty much using the formula that our founding fathers conceived. I no more trust power in the hands of scientists and scholars than I do in the hands of politicians and priests, and religionists (or areligionists for that matter) have no monopoloy on fanaticism, as Hoffer suggests in my link below:

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/truebeliever.htm