Someone's karma ran over my dogma

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

Ted Moffett raises some interesting points.

"Is there social harm from dogmatic fundamentalist views that will
not admit . . ." But if there is demonstrable social harm from
dogmatic fundamentalism, I wonder what the appropriate penalty might be?
I don't have to report to a reeducation center yet, do I?

Seriously, a Christian absolutist is not someone who claims to know
absolutely, but rather someone who claims within bounded limits to know
the absolute. The epistemic certainty sought by Enlightenment philosophy
is an idol -- the only one who can know absolutely is God. Thus the
Christian claim is that we can know genuinely, but never exhaustively.
Creaturely humility requires that we remind ourselves to stay open to
correction, not because knowledge is infinitely flexible
(relativism), but rather because our knowledge is always partial -- even
when what we know is true, as far as it goes.

Because absolute epistemic certainty is not an option for any creature,
the measuring stick we use in every social setting to indicate our
dedication to our absolute is, positively, what we are willing to live
and die for, and negatively, what we are willing to kill for. Dogmatic
Muslims ran planes into the World Trade Towers. Dogmatic Americans
answered fire with fire, and we kicked a little Talibutt. They killed, we
died. We killed, they died. Now what? Why? Who says?

"All I am asking for is honest debate based on logic and fact."
And here is where Ted Moffett demonstrates his commitment to his (not so
hidden) absolute. It appears that he thinks honest debate is
better than dishonest debate, and that logic and fact is better than,
say, emotion and whimsy. But why is it necessary for all of us to obey
Ted's rules?