Tuesday 25 June 2013

Avoiding Dogmatic Language

Theologians often seem to "pontificate" using dogmatic absolutes. Can this practice be reduced or avoided? Albert Ellis and others think so.

«Bourland and other advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding and/or conflict.[3][4]»
E-Prime - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime


Best Regards,
RRW

1 comment:

micha berger said...

It's the Imagine Effect, which I'm naming after the song by John Lennon. In it he asks the listener to imagine a world without a heaven, countries, religion, posessions, etc... "and the world will live as one".

Yes, all you have to do to get humanity to stop fighting is to remove all those things people care enough about to fight over them.

But then, you've taken away everything to live for as well.

If you ask clergy to avoid passionate, absolutist language, there would be less conflict. But also less inspiration. The nevi'im spoke in such terms for a reason.