Introduction to list members

[Rami Rustom]

Welcome,

I first got interested in the problems of religion for personal
reasons. But now I'm interested because of what I see going on in the
world. People are committing evil acts (terrorism) in the name of
their religion and things aren't getting better. This is a problem
that affects all of society, not just a few of us personally. Whats
the solution? I don't know, but before we can create a solution, we
need to understand the problem and its causes.

So in my effort to understand the terrorism problem, I started
discussing on Islam-watch.org. I quickly realized that there is little
fruitful discussion going on there. Discussion is sabotaged regularly.
Sometimes somebody introduces an important topic and then the
discussion takes a tangent with personal attacks and random off-topic
discussion that is usually done in order to evade criticism. So the
result is that no one gets any closer to the truth. Minds are not
changing. No one is convincing anyone else, at least its not apparent
from my point of view. If people are being persuaded, they aren't
telling anyone. Knowledge cannot evolve this way. A solution won't be
found like this. So this is a problem and its connected to (and is
part of) the terrorism problem.

So, why is there little success in persuasion on that site? I think
the reasons are as follows. (This is not meant to be a complete list.
If you think of more reasons, please chime in.)

(1) Bad psycho-epistemology on the part of Muslims, and more
importantly bad choices on the part of ex-Muslims because of their
ignorance of the bad psycho-epistemology of Muslims. By bad
psycho-epistemology, I mean stuff like this:
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-do-people-rationalize.html

(2) Lack of a tradition of criticism in Islamic cultures -- which
contributes to the above problem. By that I mean stuff like this:
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2012/09/why-most-terrorists-are-muslims.html

(3) Bad discussion techniques on the part of Muslims and non-Muslims.
One of these bad techniques is poor choice of argumentative points.
For example, I've seen non-Muslims argue over Sharia law with a Muslim
who doesn't believe in Hadith. This is a poor choice of argument
because believing that Hadith is false means also believing that
Sharia is false. So how does one get better at arguing? Philosophical
sophistication. How does one increase his philosophical skill?
Participate on this list and the other Popperian lists. This is the
main Popperian list:
http://groups.google.com/group/beginning-of-infinity.

Thats all for now.

Feel free to start asking questions or explaining problems or creating
solutions.

Regarding posting, please read the posting guidelines here:
http://beginningofinfinity.com/list-guidelines.

Don't be too concerned about getting the posting right the first time.
If you make mistakes I'll explain them to you in detail privately.

-- Rami Rustom
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com

[Elliot Temple]

In each of the things you blame for the problems, you mention Muslims or Islam.

But what you described sounded like most forums that have anything to do with politics or philosophy.

-- Elliot Temple
http://beginningofinfinity.com/

[Rami Rustom]

hmm. Ok so almost everyone has these discussion/persuasion problems.
Why is this the case? Why don't they know better? Is it only
Popperians that get it right?

Are you saying that persuading Muslims is hopeless (meaning that
discussions won't end in agreement)? That its hopeless even if
non-Muslims improve their discussion techniques?

[Elliot Temple]

Do Popperians get it right? Have you read any Popperian forums/lists that aren't from the one specific group of people you like?

>
> Are you saying that persuading Muslims is hopeless (meaning that
> discussions won't end in agreement)? That its hopeless even if
> non-Muslims improve their discussion techniques?

No I didn't say that.

[Rami Rustom]

The ones I know.

> Have you read any Popperian forums/lists that aren't from the one specific group of people you like?

I didn't realize there were any other Popperian forum/lists. Do they
exist? Are they any good?