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Electric Monks were made for a reason.
Surprisingly pertinent to the current discussion.
This can be bad on the assumption that whoever is exposed to the maxim is not a proponent of "virtue ethics" (I use this as a catch-all term for various religious ethics doctrines, the underlying idea is that moral truths are given to people by a divine authority rather than discovered by studying human behavior, needs and happiness). In this situation, the maxim is an invitation to embrace ideas that aren't contradictory to one's own, but that live "outside the system", to put them on equal footing.
To make this more concrete, let's suppose the subject of child brides. Some religions have no problem with marrying girls of any age to men of any age. Now, the maxim suggests that no matter what your moral framework looks like, you should accept that under some circumstances it's OK to have child marriages. But, this isn't a contradiction. There's no ethical theory that's not based on divine revelation that would accept such a thing. And that's why, by and large, the Western society came to treat child marriages as a crime.
Contradictions are only possible when two parties agree on the premises that led to contradicting conclusion, and, in principle, should be possible to be resolved by figuring out which party had a faulty process that derived a contradicting opinion. Resolving such contradictions is a productive way forward. But, the kind of "disagreement" between religious ethics and "derived" ethics is where the premises are different. So, there can be no way forward in an argument between the two, because the only way the two can agree is if one completely abandons their premises.
Essentially, you can think about it as if two teams wanted to compete in some sport. If both are playing soccer, then there's a meaning to winning / losing, keeping the score, being good or bad at the game. But, if one team plays soccer while another team is playing chess... it just doesn't make sense to pit them against each other.
You seem to have either misread the maxim, or misunderstood it.
The maxim is not that an intelligent person -must- hold two contradictory thoughts in their head at once - rather, that they should be able to. Being "able to" do something, does not mean one does it in all cases.
To say that the maxim suggests that someone "should" accept that something that is bad, is sometimes good, is a plain misreading of the text. All it's saying is that people -can- do this, if they so choose.
The maxim is not used by religious people to its intended effect. Please read again, if you didn't see it the first time. The maxim is used as a challenge that can be rephrased as: "if you are as intelligent as you claim, then you should be able to accept both what you believe to be true and whatever nonsense I want you to believe to be true."
Your comment literally says "the maxim suggests".
If that wasn't what you were saying, then your comment is misphrased.
If that -was- what you were saying, then I reiterate that, no, the maxim does not suggest that. You (or whatever hypothetical person you're referring to) are the one suggesting it, not the maxim.
It doesn't matter how you rephrase it - "should be able to" is not the same as "must". "Able-bodied people should be able to jump off the top of a building." That's a perfectly valid and true statement - jumping off of things is within the physical capabilities of the able-bodied. But that statement, however true, does not suggest that one must jump off the top of a building to prove that one is able-bodied.
> No, I didn't mean that it has to happen in all cases.
If it doesn't have to happen in all cases, then an intelligent person can simply say "no, even though I am -able to- accept contradictory ideas, in this case I still reject child marriage in all contexts". Clearly you would agree that this is perfectly compatible with the maxim. So, in what way is the maxim being harmful here?
In reality, your comment has almost nothing to do with the maxim itself, and is mostly just about people using religion and rhetoric to manipulate others. Such people would use whatever tool they have available - with or without the existence of the maxim.
Any use by ideological groups twists the purpose of the phrase on its head. The quote encourages thinking and consideration. You'd have to turn off your brain for this to have the opposite effect.
Well, it would not be too surprising that it can be used to, for example, make people think that they can trust science and also believe in some almighty, unexplainable by science divine entity.
Careful you don't fall into the trap of indoctrination. :)
My imaginary friend does, buy my magic book.