You make a good point. Most people think that intellectual honesty is just being consistent intellectually, but that really has nothing at all to do with emotional and/or spiritual honesty. People can appear quite intellectually honest, and be living a complete lie on the inside... There are many intellectuals and atheist who can make a great intellectual case, then when out of view they drink heavily and do drugs to cope with the pain of living... If the atheists are actually in denial about the reasons for their atheism, if they are trying to not face the pain of failure with theism, if their atheism really doesn't satisfy them intellectually, if it is a mask they wear to try to fool others and themselves, if they are secretly still a believer in God but just mad like a spoiled child not getting their way, if they are operating out of resentments from childhood and childhood traumas...then what is the real value of their so called intellectual honesty? Emotions rule the intellect, no matter what the intellectuals say. We see routinely the so called intellectuals get all pissed off, impatient, engaging in name calling, etc. The bottom line is what counts, and only a person and God actually knows what their real inner condition is... False pride is the cornerstone of much of the intellectualism, and fundamentally false pride is not genuine intellectual honesty... They say "There are no atheists in foxholes" which means in times of severe stress, people revert to their actual bottom line...and the actual bottom line is where real honesty is to be found...
Yea, ya know it might have been short sighted of me to not consider the overlap of behavior as it results--or not -- from belief. The part of your post where you bring up a theist's actions being inconsistent with the catechisms of their religion I think is more in the behavior camp then any disingenuities present when an adherent expresses their beliefs in an academic context. Thing is all behavior starts as a mental event before its realized as an expression. Language sometimes falls short of capturing essence during the word formulating process. Another thing that went zing right past me is that I automatically defaulted to thinking of the question as a reaction to television evangelists selling religion and not considering it as it relates to oneself. Its hard to figure how religious adherent could be intellectually honest since intellectualism implies an empirical approach to a problem and with religion faith is the only method. I dunno, its late and I'm just free associating.
We have always seen lots of killing in the name of God, but the atheists claim there has been no killing in the name of non God. While this may be intellectually accurate, I would argue that any premeditated killing stems from belief, and where there is belief that one life is superior to another because of some God based belief, or where there is some belief that life has no essential value based on some non God belief, the net result is killing... Both atheists and theists are seen being self righteous and rationalizing their actions, so I chalk it all up to human nature being what it is for all people irrespective of their God or non God belief system. My experience is that the atheist may be more intellectually honest on the one hand and at the same time be more emotionally dishonest with themselves, as their mind is clever enough to maintain a strong defense system against their basic inner conflict of what they want to believe, and what they truly in their gut believe... If I am wrong, I won't be attacked for these comments by the atheist trying to defend themselves and their cognitive/emotional dissonance...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wECRvNRquvI This Dawkins vs O'Reilly video is consistent with your post. When Dawkins tells O'Reilly that atheists didn't kill because of their nonbeliefs and OReilly replies too quickly with their lacking a moral compass it didn't allow Dawkins to add but theists did kill because of their beliefs. The way I see it is killing is justified if in self defense but not justified because some charismatic leader got his believers all ginned up because he convinced them the windmills were coming rom over the horizon to rape and pilage. But then its easy to oversimplify how atheists sometimes justify their killing. Tilting at windmills --or not-- is in the eye of the beholder. I'm not bringing anything new to the table here.
The leaders know what the real motive behind their war is...and with few exceptions it is not about a theistic or atheistic Golden Rule philosophy... The followers, who actually do most of the killing are generally in their own mind on a mission from God or from non God. It either takes a lot of faith in the cause to kill other human beings so aggressively, or just plain pathology to kill others when self defense or actual survival is not in play... To the dead and their families, it really doesn't matter if the killers were doing it for Allah, or for Christ, or for King David, or for the Fuehrer and Fatherland, or Mother Russia, etc... Oh, and despite what they will say, non belief in God is a belief system for the atheists which will impact their actions on some level...perhaps making it easier to rationalize behavior that is destructive to themselves or others. In modern civilization, whoever wins the war typically rationalizes the "Holy" nature of it, whether the God they are fighting for is theistic, or the non God of an intellectually atheistic ideology... p.s. I saw that interview previously, and I thought O'Idiot was his typical moralist windbag self, but I also thought Dawkins was not being completely intellectually/emotionally honest...
Dawkins is much better when he doesn't have to contend with obstacles. Not that he can't, its just that O'Reilly has being disruptive down to a science even when he's wrong.
Correction, spoken like a truly unintelligent intellectually dishonest theist. Do you even have a clue as to what intellectual honesty might be? Demanding I make an unfounded assertion "God could exist", based on nothing more than assumption and conjecture in the way you already have is intellectually dishonest. Were I to do so would make me as intellectually dishonest as yourself. You nor anyone else anywhere at any time has ever produced any knowledge or information or validation about God outside imagination. God has only ever been shown to be a figment of human mental imagery. So on that groundless presumptuousness you want me also to throw away intellectual honesty which requires everyone who maintains a conviction, as you do, to keep it in proportion to their evidence. To "admit" to a superfluous trivial idea like "there could be a God" is devoid of any substantial reason to make it ,just as "there could be an Eater Bunny" is. You want me to pointlessly admit to something for no reason at all just like you do. You'd have me as intellectually dishonest as yourself if only you could. Like Optional777 you've failed miserably in reasoning all your claims of God to those who make no such assertions or counter claims. So as theists you both try in intellectually dishonest ways, to shift any blame you can possibly concoct over to atheists for that failure. You do it all in place of validating your own claim. Obviously needing anyone who doesn't fall for all the lack of regard for facts or truth you both display, to become as dishonest as yourselves.
quite a story ... Georgetown pretends it's not religious for the One .... Here's a question for you Thunderdog ... Just How Amoral Are You? edit: i must disclose, I absolutely abhore this psuedo-intellectual Canadian Marxist POS>