Does humanity deserve Corona?

[Belacqua]

WinterHold is not aware that saint Augustine whome Belacqua follows and promotes, would have him at least tortured if not killed for believing in "distorted" interpretation of Bible. Real friends those two.

This is interesting. 

I don't promote or follow Augustine. But I think I understand why you say I do.

This relates to Hofstadter's classic book about anti-intellectualism. For him, someone who is not anti-intellectual can spend time studying a subject that he doesn't agree with. 

This is obvious in the case of, say, a historian of WWII. Such a person could describe the opinions of Nazis without being a Nazi. Likewise, someone who studies theology can describe someone else's thinking without agreeing with it.

I once met a really interesting American guy who had graduated from the Buddhist university in Kyoto. He read primary sources in Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit, and published papers on Buddhist metaphysics. He was not a Buddhist. 

I don't have his level of scholarship, but I share his interest in understanding people who are unlike me. When someone on this forum says something too simple, like "Christians believe in angry sky-daddy," I can point out that this is not true of many Christians, including Augustine. From that you seem to conclude that I agree with him.

You have never read Augustine, or any of his predecessors or those who follow on from him. Your information comes from propagandists like Harris, so you only know about these subjects third or fourth hand. 


Recently you've taken to calling me a bigot, and that's also interesting. You started when I called you one, so it pretty much just seems to be "NO, YOU ARE." When I called you one, I gave a definition of what I mean by the term and reasons as to why you fit the definition. If you have a similar argument as to why you think I'm a bigot, I'd be interested to read it. Maybe I am one, in which case you would be doing me a favor by explaining it. But if you're just using the word in order to mirror it back to me, without a reason, that's boring.