Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas , Chris G.

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jul 28, 2007 at 14:42

Dear Chris, you write :

> Attacking the very core of their belief system in an aggressive, offensive manner makes no logical sense. How will that magically make them bow down before us and accept the ways of secularism and say that they are inferior to Western culture. This is a complete lack of understanding of Islamic cultures and the concept of honor and shame within those cultures. It is the very worst thing you can do if you are trying to get them to change their ways.

On the contrary. This is the best way to see what your partner is after - truth or deceptioon, sound reasoning or pleasant lies, freedom of speech or PC mind control. Attacking any system with potent rational arguments is the first and most important way to check its validity. In fact , it is a sacred duty of every rational person to prevent the spread of nonsense, lies, deceptions, hoaxes, disinformation. If you don't believe, make the following experiment. Invent an absurdity or a lie (e.g. "I have seen a UFO!!!") and tell it with a serious face to two different persons you know - a spineless yes-man and a harsh cynic. If you prefer to be surrounded with spineless liars ( or idiots respectful of your arrant lies) and use them to intimidate and silence the cynics, you can be sure that soon you'll be declared an expert on UFOs. In short, this is how Islam came into being.

Now what you suggest in the quote above seems to me to be a most offensive and harmful thing I could do. I never have problems with people arguing harshly about my views, questioning , doubting what I say or do. On the contrary, I am most thankful to them for their openness as I can see things and details I would perhaps be never aware of.

And the first precondition of any such sincere exchange of views is lack of fear and respect for unessential things such as the other person's anger or revenge or resentment. To tell the triuth you have to disrespect all of those unessential paraphenranlia. I want to know the truth and no fairy tales instead to make me feel good. I expect people to do the same. Visibly with Moslems it is impossible , so I don't respect any Moslems.

As Aristotle put it in a more philosophical manner : "I respect Plato. But I do respect the truth much more than Plato".

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".