I do not say that men do not possess complete intellectual integrity. I would never say such a thing. I'm affronted. What I say is that men have not a shadow of integrity whatsoever. I am making a more radical assertion. The propelling motive in the formation of ideas is chiefly and primarily what contents a man's spirit. Ratiocination is the clothes that emotion wears. Only having once decided what is temperamentally suitable do we go about furnishing it with such justifications as we can command.
Do I make make sweeping claim? Answer: If you can find a man who's spared no opportunity to disprove his beliefs with the zest that he attacks opposing beliefs you can do something I cannot. If such a man had a tail and swung from a tree he would be on the endangered species list.
This does not mean that there is no sphere of human knowledge from which emotion is absent. There are. Nobody is ever excercised by mathematics for instance. But the moment we fall to discussing any doubtful area of human knowledge, the insance our topic is a matter of contention, political or theological, up springs the Old Adam.
Hola Amante,
I think Z10 and a few others have been hitting on the point. The first assertion which you admit is that the " thinking man", a man who dogmatically searches out every possibility to every thing is a fictional entity. Fair enough to use an aspiring ideal, but to use it as a standard by which to measure a human's intentions such as a man's loss of faith in a religion and to say that because he did not search out every possibility then he must have used his emotions primarily is to turn the "thinking man" aspiring ideal into a straw man with which to browbeat others. This isn't the only time this has been done, Jesus is held as an ideal man for others to emulate, which is fine, until the fiery calls that all men are but lowly sinners and need to repent comes around. At this point Jesus is no long an aspiring character but a crude cudgel to beat with.
In this same vein you beat up the straw man of the thinking man as a fictional entity to say, " Well if we are not purely rational beings guided by our intellect, then we must be shallow emotional creatures, desperately clinging to want to feel and throwing the thread bare cloak over our emotions and calling them ideals." At this point we have gone from one extreme to the other. Which is the point I was trying to make yesterday. Men are not unemotional automatons when it comes to making decisions, but neither are men ravishing emotional devourers changing ideas and creeds on emotional whims. Logic, rationality, deduction, critical analysis, and a certain will towards logic and away from petty emotions is found at different strengths at different times in different people. This is backed up by theory in social psychology and in persuasive and anecdotal arguments brought up here ( people have faced immediate death for becoming an atheist, Christian, Muslim, Democrat, Republican, Anarchist, etc. all of which invalidate your idea that immediate satisfaction is what is most important).
Your ideas are not wrong, they are just not complete but to brow beat the faithless or the faithful, to say that because one hasn't studied years on end a subject that he must be an emotional featherweight blowing where he desires take him is to either lack the full picture or to create a false dichotomy.
In reality though I just posted this with the hopes of raising your ire, I hear coitus iratum is the best.
Agradezco mucho el favor que no dudo me dispensarán, y en la espera de sus noticias les saludo atentamente,
Tu amante.
Topic: Existing theory of ex-Muslims