As far as I know, reason has never lead one group of people to savagely kill off another group of people for having different beliefs. Faith on the other hand...
TheHermit
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com
> [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
> Of KMO
> Sent: Sunday, March 14, 1999 7:34 PM
> To: virus@lucifer.com
> Subject: Re: virus: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
>
>
> Eric Boyd wrote:
>
> > In the proper sense, the beast ("faith") can have it's good
> sides, or
> > it's pretty moods, but I suspect it always... there is a very dark
> > side to faith, much more destructive than they dark side of
> reason (in
> > my estimation).
>
> I apologize in advance if this seems picky,
>
> (wait for it)
>
> ...buuuuuut, it seems as though you may have used the word
> "estimation"
> in a conscious detour around saying that it is your
> "impression" or your
> "perception" or (God forbid) your "feeling," that the dark
> side of faith
> is more destructive than the dark side of reason. Here's what
> WWWebsters
> has to say about what it means to "estimate" something:
>
> Main Entry: 1es·ti·mate
> Pronunciation: 'es-t&-"mAt
> Function: transitive verb
> Inflected Form(s): -mat·ed; -mat·ing
> Etymology: Latin aestimatus, past participle of aestimare to value,
> estimate
> Date: circa 1532
> 1 archaic a : ESTEEM b : APPRAISE
> 2 a : to judge tentatively or approximately the value, worth, or
> significance of b : to determine roughly the size, extent, or
> nature of
> c : to produce a
> statement of the approximate cost of
> 3 : JUDGE, CONCLUDE
> - es·ti·ma·tive /-"mA-tiv/ adjective
> synonyms ESTIMATE, APPRAISE, EVALUATE, VALUE, RATE,
>
>
> If you have made a tentative judgement that the dark side of faith is
> more destructive than the dark side of reason, and if making a tentive
> judgement is to be distinct from simply reporting your
> expectation-filtered perceptions, then it seems to me as though we
> should expect you to be able to give an account of how you
> selected your
> examples of the dark side of faith to compare to your sample cases of
> the dark side of reason without allowing your preconcetions
> to introduce
> a bias in the example-selection process.
>
> Can you give such an account?
>
> -KMO
>
>