>As an initial step in trying to open a dialog which may never come about,
>I would like to ask At why the evil that Christians and other "believers"
>have inflicted on the world he attributes not to their "beliefs" but to
>something he chooses to call "judgment." That is, the Grand Inquisitor and
>the Crusaders did not torture and kill millions because of their Christian
>"beliefs" but because something that At inserts into the conversation: bad
>"judgment".
>
>The question then must be raised: why are "believers" so prone to this
>kind of murderous bad "judgment"?
Here are my small thoughts on the subject.
There are human beings that have ownership over their beliefs and there
are beliefs that 'own' human beings. In the latter situation humans have
no free choice. They are ruled by there beliefs, mental models,
assumptions, whatever. Their beliefs are transformed in 'being possesed
by......'. Senator MacArthur saw communists all over America. His beliefs
had total control over him.
We shouldn't forget that there is always a moraly good intended core in an
over-passionated belief. It can be re-discovered by cool judgment, by
asking the right questions, by putting the beliefs in a factical context.
In his posting LO 19640, Winfried Dressler gave an excellent example of the
type of questions I am pointing at :
>1.) What are the fundamental beliefs to Systems Thinking?
>2.) What kind of challenging older beliefs (which ones?) led to those
>fundamental beliefs of question 1.)?
However I would add two more questions:
1b.) What occurance(s) are connected to these fundamental beliefs?
2b.) What important occurrances led to the questioning of the older beliefs?
Does this make sense to anybody?
Greetings,
Winfried Deijmann
(BTW: Holland is drowning...... because of all the rain)
--Winfried M. Deijmann - Deijmann & Partners - Zutphen - The Netherlands Artists, Consultants and Facilitators for Organizational Learning, Leadership and Action Learning Events Het Zwanevlot 37, NL 7206 CB Zutphen, The Netherlands <Winfried@universal.nl> Phone: +31-(0)575-522076 mobile: +31-(0)654 94 71 27 Homepage: http://www.come.to/dialoog
For information on our International Workshops: <http://www.universal.nl/users/winfried/workshopsuk.html>
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