Ism’s can be troublesome.

Capitalism, socialism, communism, materialism, Zionism, Darwinism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianism, Islamism, fascism, scientism, egoism, empiricism, dualism, fatalism, hedonism, ignorantism, individualism, legalism, nihilism, perfectionism, pessimism, pyrrhonism, sensationalism, skepticism, solipsism, predestinarianism

My favorite is intellectualism as we often confuse intellectualism with intelligence. World of difference.

posted on September 27, 2009
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Hi Researcher,

  You’ve moved posts then!

  You’ve listed a huge number of different philosophies,  ideas and systems up there. I hope with your favourite you are not basing your standards just on what you personally think is right and wrong.

  The over-arching principle of the application of bodies of understanding relative to one another could be slapped with an ‘ism’ i suppose, though i prefer to make it a little simpler and look at individual ideas and their particular merits.

  I would guess that intelligence is more of a potential, lurking in the background. It can be used in many ways. Of course in the human mind it also rubs up against other human qualities; senses, emotions and beliefs for three, directing it in ways pleasant to the senses or emotions. Or, if you are having a bad day, elsewhere.

  We have in our world hypothesis, data and conclusions. There is little else if we are honest. How a person forms conclusions is one facet of intelligence, though an important one if we are to make headway in understanding. Are the conclusions so often portrayed as firm outside of the sciences really so far from their original state of hypothesis?

  Simply requiring a high standard of evidence, especially if something is extraordinary by a current standard, is not the indicator of intellectualism your mindset might suggest. Nor is revealing to others where gaps in their hypothesis and conclusions might be. Else the term falls apart in its usefulness.
 
  Do i have intelligence from my appreciation of crustal mechanics and the palaeontological, geological and physical evidences for plate tectonics or do i suffer from intellectualism if i educate a child who has not come across the idea? How about an adult? Or an adult who disagrees, thinking it is due to Noah’s flood?

  Is it intellectualism to point out David Hume’s refutation of supernatural philosophies? It does exist after all, and then is up to the reader to research it.

  What about morphogenetic fields? Would it be intellectualism to point out that the extension of biological evolution into physics and geology does not seem to hold, though their is certainly evolution of other sorts. That evolution in geological evidences is not seen in the way he would suggest, with rules of chemical and physical evolution changing over time, such as in magma chemistry, crystal formation, surface structure. Or how about changes in the fundamental constants, as also implied. The physicists have much to say based on astronomical observations.

  What of Dean Radin’s ideas of reptile aliens, or drug based observations of the universal ‘OM’ and the philosophers stone? I have to accept they are possibilities, but would accusations of intellectualism fit for someone who is simply not won over by an argument? How many arguments do you disagree with? Wouldnt a charge of intellectualism of this character risk evaporation? Surely any side can disagree without name calling.

  I think it is fairer to just compare different hypothesis and see if people are honest about their conclusions. I dont know about many things in life and though i disagree with peoples jumps from hypothesis to conclusion if i cannot see their steps or if their steps contain jumps showing bias towards various conclusions, i have so far never used an ‘ism’ - it contains no data

posted on September 27, 2009
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The takeover of Israel by the growing number ultra-right wing Jews is bad news. Fundamentalist religion and nuclear weapons can be a lethal mix especially when your neighbors are your enemies.
Unless reason and rational thinking begins to gain ground in this violent region of the world, the middle east could be headed for a nuclear showdown and the lost lives of millions.

posted on September 27, 2009
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