Bringing Wisdom of Socrates to Modern Dialogue - Karen Armstrong

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/08/14/Karen_Armstrong_Charter_for_Compassion

Author, scholar and journalist Karen Armstrong discusses the need to apply Socratic philosophy to the counterproductive fierceness of modern debate. "Real philosophical debate...that is conducted in the spirit of malice or hate will not work," she says.

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Ms. Armstrong describes how Islam, Judaism and Christianity have been diverted from a shared moral purpose. She now is working with the TED community to build a Charter for Compassion. - Chautauqua Institution

Karen Armstrong is one of the most provocative, original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world. Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun who left a British convent to pursue a degree in modern literature at Oxford. In 1982 she wrote a book about her seven years in the convent, Through the Narrow Gate, that angered and challenged Catholics worldwide; her recent book The Spiral Staircase discusses her subsequent spiritual awakening after leaving the convent, when she began to develop her iconoclastic take on the great monotheistic religions. She has written more than 20 books around the ideas of what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and around their effect on world events, including the magisterial A History of God and Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Todays World. Her latest book is The Bible: A Biography. Her meditations on personal faith and religion (she calls herself a freelance monotheist) spark discussion — especially her take on fundamentalism, which she sees in a historical context, as an outgrowth of modern culture.

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[Redfingers]

Matt, I suggest you search Google for a guy named ToddAllenGates on Youtube and his video series "Using the Socratic method with Christian proselytizers."

I've found it to be by FAR the most effective means not just of engaging and persuading a stubborn-ass Christian, proselytizer or otherwise, but also by far the most effective means of establishing knowledge. The most important thing is to get the Christian (the claimant) to reveal his source of knowledge (usually subjective).

[Bassist21050]

Being a philosophy major I have to seriously question her reading of Plato. The Socratic dialogues have nothing humble in them, except for the sake of irony. And while she's right that most of the dialogues end in aporia, it's not as even-handed as all that; Socrates completely discredits and humiliates his opponent, and then by admitting his own ignorance manages to save face very neatly. But it's still quite condescending if you read it closely.

[Redfingers]

@Pythagoras211

Karen Armstrong is a cunt.

I'm gonna go take a shit.

[Pythagoras211]

@Redfingers No, it just so happens that your the most worthy target of my hatred today. Humility = not thinking about yourself = self-transcendence = feeling better about yourself. Go read Karen Armstrong, she'll instruct you.

[Redfingers]

@Pythagoras211

Humility? How would humility make me feel better about myself?

After reading your screed....my, are you butthurt, or something?

[Pythagoras211]

@Redfingers My God, show some fucking humility you prick. You might FEEL better about yourself.

[Pythagoras211]

@Redfingers Fuck you, you're unbelievably arrogant and condescending. I know people like you. They seek to deprecate and dominate others, establish their superiority over others, so that they can boost their own over-inflated egos. My fucking God, how vain and superficial. Masochists, too ;)

And you talk about projection? And this doesn't apply to you? Couldn't it be that you're projecting your own flaws onto people you think are below you, attacking them as if your flaws actually exist in them?

[jhall38]

@Redfingers Karen is a pretty good Muslim proselytizer, by spreading misinformation, getting people thinking Moh was basically Jesus reincarnated. Jesus' ethic was no better than Moh's as far as she's concerned. As for me, I'd rather the idiots of the world follow a pacifist than a man teaching people to cut off thieves' hands, to rape captive women, steal from highways in religious conflicts, to behead people at the drop of a hat, etc. As you see, I'm not a Muslim proselytizer like Karen.

[jhall38]

Sickening sweet offal seems to come out of this woman's mouth whenever she speaks. She is Mohammed's biggest defender, Islam's most popular kaffir. May God rebuke her and bring to an end the tyranny of Islam in the world.

[jhall38]

Yes, Karen, I can imagine how gentle Mohammed was. Oh, how he gently lectured his wonderful followers! "Now be nice, guys, when you raid that Jewish town. When you capture the tribal head, be sure to tie her legs & arms to the camels gently. She is old you know. And give her time for any last words she might have, before you rip her body apart. Oh, yes, Abdul, I have a question, my Socratic student. How will you ship her head to me over in Medina.Yes, Bader? Do you have something to add?"

[jhall38]

First error...Socrates is not the sole founder of the Western Rational Tradition. Aristotle represents a different stream just as important and antithetical to Socratic interest. Second error...the assumption that gentleness must accompany the expression of opinions. How gently ciykd Plato have expressed his doctrine of infanticide when members of the Bronze class mated with those of the Golden class, only to produce children which were to be abandoned on hillsides? How you gloss over facts.

[Redfingers]

@jhall38

I am not God, if I was God, that would suggest I was sucking my own penis. No, as a matter of fact, God is a faggot and he is in fact sucking my dick, right now. That's what I'm trying to establish to you. That is the problem with you God lovers is that you're sucking the God cock so hard you have no capacity to realize not only that you're getting fucked but also that God loves it. You have no capacity to understand that God might give you the reacharound if you'd only ask.