(Warning: If speaking frankly about religion's dark side upsets you, please read no further.)
There has been a lot of discussion on this site recently about the potential positive role religion (specifically Christianity) can have in solving our environmental problems.
Call me skeptical.
Before I explain, it's important to lay out a few things, since as soon as someone criticizes of religion it opens them up to all sorts of allegations. First off, I fully respect and support the right of freedom of religion and the larger right for everyone to believe whatever they want. In fact, I would fight for that right any day. But while I respect people's right to their beliefs, I don't have to respect the content of those beliefs, or more importantly, believe that they are a sound basis for public policy. For example, someone might believe that oil companies are engaged in a vast conspiracy to control the world or that little green men control the White House. I can respect the right to freedom of speech and thought, but I don't have to take those assertions or beliefs seriously.
The same holds for religion.
I'm someone who has actually read the Bible and most other major religious works. While no doubt there are beautiful verses and passages that suggest peaceful and compassionate conduct consistent with a progressive environmental ethic, the god depicted in the Bible acts more often than not like a genocidal terrorist. No, that wasn't a typo. The god of the Bible routinely slaughters innocents to punish them for the "sins" of their ancestors (anyone know the story of Passover?). He has not only destroyed the world already a few times in his anger, but plans to do so again. In addition, while Jesus is rightly associated with many views of tolerance and peace, such as in the Sermon on the Mount, he is far from the pacifist many claim, according to other accounts in the New Testament.
The point is that after reading these texts I see no reason to associate them with the type of ethic I think is most needed to solve our current environmental problems. In fact, I think the blind faith and fear of science religions bring out in many is exactly the antithesis of what we need most: reasoned debate and an acceptance that we are not as exceptional as we are accustomed to believing. This last point runs entirely counter to the thrust of all religious thought: that we are somehow elevated by our god above all other living things. This is not to say I believe there is a moral equivalence between a human being and an ape, but that we have much more in common with the other animals than we acknowledge, and that our fate is much more closely tied to theirs than we know.
So if religion does not provide a good justification for an ethic that respects life and understands that we are not as unique as we think, can it still have a positive role to play in convincing those who are religious to take environmentalism more seriously? Again, call me skeptical. This would be true if a religious environmental awakening could convince significant numbers of people who are not otherwise prone to thinking about the environment to do so. It would have an especially profound effect if it were to convince large numbers on the religious right to demand more action from the GOP leadership. I see very little evidence of this. If anything, the religious right is turning away from the GOP because it hasn't been sufficiently adept at denying gay rights and stripping women of their reproductive freedom. As to the Christian left, they are already voting and supporting environmental candidates anyway.
So where does this leave us?
I do not deny there may be some good courting religious communities for environmental goals based on strictly pragmatic grounds, but the effect will likely be minimal. I think our energy would be much better spent educating the public about the types of common sense public policies that would have significant environmental impacts, like the hugely destructive resource subsidies most countries support, and shifting our tax burden toward consumption of harmful products and away from income.
Greens have finally got the Big Mo
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Comments
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JackH Posted 11:20 pm
15 Oct 2006
Environmentalism alone doesn't seem to be good enough: it has to be environmentalism + strict secularism + hardcore animal rights + Friedman/Hayek-esque unrestricted capitalism, etc... I don't presume to know your political leanings, but you're displaying that progressive tendency to link everything together and then spend endless hours and days and months and years and decades demanding that everyone else agree with you before you can really get down to work. It's well and good to critique one position or another, but at some point, it's just one of those academic point-scoring contests that damages far more than it helps. What is the problem with letting religious people believe whatever ethic it takes for them to do what needs to be done? In your first paragraph, you say you don't care what people believe, but you spend the rest of the post arguing exactly the opposite.
It's counterproductive, it's offputting, and to be perfectly honest, it's something I haven't seen nearly as much from the religious end of the discussion.
This reminds me of some earlier discussions about animal rights, in which identical issues came up: could you be a carnivore and an environmentalist? Does every environmentalist have to carry a copy of "Animal Liberation" in their back pocket? Does every Sierra Club meeting have to inspect the attendees to make sure they're not wearing leather or other animal product? Can we agree to disagree on some issues? Do we really have the luxury of time to be this scrupulous?
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jjwfmme Posted 1:00 am
16 Oct 2006
I don't know why this couldn't be called educating the public. As Malcom Gladwell implies, political winds don't change simply because people are lectured to. (As a matter of fact, education doesn't always happen because people are lectured to.)
No doubt, we do need to "educate the public" in the straightforward way that you say. But what's wrong with working on other fronts as well? I don't know what we have to gain by being so closed-minded toward potential allies...
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:16 am
16 Oct 2006
If you vote green, you vote green. If you don't you don't. If you are one who has an environmental ethic but has continued to vote Republican, well, that's your business and you know where your priorities lie--with your religion. It is also an example of what is wrong with this whole alliance thing. There is an elephant in the living room that we are all dancing around.
"Can we agree to disagree on some issues?"
If by that you mean the abortion issue, then the answer is yes, but only if more of the religious right shake off the dogma being fed to them by their leaders (as they have with the environment) and realize that they have no right to use our political system to force that particular, or any other religious belief, down the throats of their fellow citizens. My mother-in-law is a devout and active Christian and very pro-choice. It obviously isn't that hard to be both. Preach the sins of abortion in your Church, not in the voting booth. A political candidate's opinion on abortion should not even be asked (they lie any way). Global warming is not an excuse to further religious (and thanks to the religious right, political) agendas.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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jjwfmme Posted 1:26 am
16 Oct 2006
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Jason D Scorse Posted 1:49 am
16 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 1:59 am
16 Oct 2006
Personally, I think the problem is fundamentalism, not Christianity. And like I said, it's a bad idea to write people off. It comes back to bite you, as we've seen in political elections in recent decades.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:06 am
16 Oct 2006
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:39 am
16 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 2:47 am
16 Oct 2006
We've had plenty of very good leaders who were religious, for instance MLK and Ghandi, and others that were more "under the radar" but were influential nonetheless, like Reinhold Niebuhr and Thomas Merton. Ideally, we would have more of these types of people influencing the church-going electorate. I'm just saying we should not write everybody off, and pay people some due respect. I'm not expecting that every churchgoer is going to run out and read Thomas Merton's Rain and the Rhinoceros, but maybe some will-- hopefully some leaders of congregations.
For the record, I consider myself an agnostic like David Weinberger.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:52 am
16 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 3:06 am
16 Oct 2006
http://www.radioopensource.org/groundhog-day/
It has absolutely nothing to do with science or material. Some people find their answers to questions of meaning in religion, and not in Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. I don't think we should write them off just because of this.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:10 am
16 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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JackH Posted 3:38 am
16 Oct 2006
Your argument, if I'm reading it right, is that religion is not a good source for any sort of environmental ethic. I disagree. Further, I think repeatedly making that case is not only a distraction, I believe it is a dangerous distraction. And, to be honest, I don't see many religious environmentalists doing the same from their end, telling secular environmentalists that their own ethic is dangerous.
As I said, I'm really not trying to be a jackass. But I've read quite a few posts from you - they've all been extremely well-written and well thought out, but they do tend to make connections that really don't need to be made and that exclude ever-widening circles of people. Sorry, but that's how I see it. And I don't think it's a good way to go about things.
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Tod Brilliant Posted 5:05 am
16 Oct 2006
You nailed it: We need strong leadership. I don't see it in either of the main parties, do you? How about a strong Party, not just strong leadership? The winds of change, they do blow fiercely, and of a sudden - the idea of a strong third party is not so unrealistic.
As for the religious issue - always remind yourself that many of the millions of self-professed relgious devotees are no more religious than you or I - they are fundamentally opportunists. If we can show them opportunities, they will march with us.
" . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar
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jjwfmme Posted 5:31 am
16 Oct 2006
Fundamentalisms of all sorts are a problem. Market fundamentalism is a problem, but that doesn't mean that you don't form alliances with people who happen to be well connected in the market. Similarly, there are religious people out there who would make good allies for us, friends even. Not all of them, to be sure. But it bothers me when someone looks sideways at this sort of effort and calls it, in a blanket way, "strictly pragmatic." I don't think you make allies when you're welcoming people in an insincere way like that.
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atreyger Posted 5:33 am
16 Oct 2006
Many church goers will listen to the preacher, but never read a book, magazine, whatever, and certainly wouldn't want to listen to some egghead from up North or from California. Church is a social and a religious experience with opportunities for education. After all that is how the majority of families either learn their morals or reinforce them.
I am by no means religious. I am, as a matter of fact very anti-organized religion; but churches, synagogues and other places of worship are very important places to way too many people to say that we should not court the religious folks.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:13 am
16 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 6:27 am
16 Oct 2006
Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don't believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster.
Pitch perfect.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:35 am
16 Oct 2006
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 5:54 am
17 Oct 2006
--JJW
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peter maher Posted 10:18 pm
17 Oct 2006
I find it interesting that you would expect to find some answers to the problems of environmentalism in the bible. I believe the bible has answers to all the problems we face in life, but often the answer is not at first obvious.Moses didn't realise that the answer to his dilemma was already in his hands[his rod]. Without wanting to give a lecture on Christianity, James says that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God who gives it liberally to all men. That has been my own experience on many occasions. If you are serious about finding the answer to your question and not just posing questions for their own sake, you might be surprised to find an answer you didn't expect. Cheers. Peter M
Peter M
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Jason D Scorse Posted 1:28 am
18 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 5:14 am
18 Oct 2006
I think this is an example of what Terry Eagleton called
vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.
But that's fine that you don't believe in a personal god. You're in good company.
What I'm disagreeing with, doctor, is your prescribing that view for the entire environmental movement.
Listen to this quote from Jurgen Habermas:
Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization.
Habermas is an atheist. But I think he would disagree with what you imply, that consorting with people in religious congregations is essentially intellectual slumming, bordering on a waste of time, etc.
Another quote, this one from Huston Smith (paraphrasing the Chronicle of Higher Education):
"If anything characterizes modernity, it is the loss of transcendence, a reality which surpasses and encompasses our everyday world." It is a simple logical mistake to think that science alone is the royal road to truth, that it can open the door to truth of every sort.
If someone turns to a 2000 year old religious tradition to find transcendence, and they do not to sign up to the whole Bertrand-Russell-style rationalist paradigm, that's an unsurmountable problem?
Now there is a certain kind of rationalist who can't even relate. In that category I put Richard Dawkins and the chainsmoking Christoper Hitchens. Hitchens writes that the very impulse for anything transcendent is "dangerous" because "it involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason."
That's fine if you believe that, Christopher, but could you leave Mother Theresa alone? (And while we're at it, in my mind you're not qualified to lecture the rest of us about the sleep of reason. No matter how much Trotsky you read at Oxford.)
But anyway, my point is that I don't think the wholesale prescription of these kinds of views is good for the environmental movement. We should be reasonable, but also inclusive. It's called democracy for a reason.
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jjwfmme Posted 5:31 am
18 Oct 2006
I think I've just seen a lot of bullying lately on this subject and wanted to clear the air.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 5:34 am
18 Oct 2006
J.S.
P.S. Also, I entirely reject that the Enlightenment is due to Christianity...that's like saying it's due entirely to white men because they were the ones who just so happened to be its original proponents. Enlightenment values happen when we move away from religion, not towards it.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 7:21 am
18 Oct 2006
I think the blind faith and fear of science religions bring out in many is exactly the antithesis of what we need most: reasoned debate and an acceptance that we are not as exceptional as we are accustomed to believing. This last point runs entirely counter to the thrust of all religious thought: that we are somehow elevated by our god above all other living things.
This doesn't characterize all religious people. Many are serious and dedicated, not to mention educated (remember, the task of educating clergy played a major role in building our university system). And these people may be an important party to convince in the process of public recognition of environmental problems. As Malcom Gladwell pointed out, a population often changes in unpredictable ways.
The other thing is that a sense of the transcendent and values often go together. I remember seeing a 60 Minutes segment with a Reagan-appointee climate scientist who said that his job wasn't to do anything but report his data to higher ups. This kind of values-free, technocratic approach bothers me. A little bit of populism, even religious populism, shouldn't be dismissed. This could be one of the ways the issue gets "reframed" as Malcom Gladwell put it.
Just lecturing and debating people doesn't always cut it. Here's a George Lakoff quote:
Within traditional liberalism you have a history of rational thought that was born out of the Enlightenment: all meanings should be literal, and everything should follow logically. So if you just tell people the facts, that should be enough -- the truth shall set you free. All people are fully rational, so if you tell them the truth, they should reach the right conclusions. That, of course, has been a disaster.
Now, the average churchgoer may not be as rational as you'd wish them to be. But their leaders went to seminary and studied theology. And theology does have some reasonableness and intellectual weight to it, despite what Richard Dawkins and his ilk may say.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 9:48 am
18 Oct 2006
vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.
So here's my question:
What is more vulgar, the tales of genocide, terrorism, infantcide, homophobia, and with abandon in the Bible or people like me who point out what that "holy" book actually says?
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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Jason D Scorse Posted 9:50 am
18 Oct 2006
What is more vulgar, the tales of genocide, terrorism, infantcide, homophobia, and tyranny that our supposed "creator" dishes out with abandon (and plans to again in the future) in the Bible or people like me who point out what that "holy" book actually says?
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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snewsom Posted 11:02 am
18 Oct 2006
I enjoyed reading your blog entry. It went places I didn't expect and I always like that because it makes me think. I have felt a growing uneasiness about some christian religions jumping on the environmental bandwagon too, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. When religions get involved in areas outside of their primary issue (spiritual matters) they can act in ways that are contradictory to the outside area when the values and agenda of the outside area conflict with their own. One recent example was when the right wing anti-immigration folks tried and very nearly succeeded in taking over the Sierra Club. Of course religious censorship of science and interference with the honest pursuit and discovery of truth has a long a genuinely hideous history that no honest critic can deny. Because some religions teach they they and they alone have the only legitimate and authoritative source of truth, and because there is no objective way to verify their source of truth, the only foundation for thier point of view is in fact arbitrary authority. Those are the ones that worry me, and they do make up the majority of all Judeo/Christian/Muslim religions. I know there are exceptions, but in all honesty, they are few and far inbetween.
So, I find myself wondering how will these religious leaders act if we accept them into the Environmental movement? Will they try to take it over and make it in their own image? Will they accept that it is science that is our source of understanding the environment, and the threats to it? Will they give the science and the scientists primacy and respect even when the science indicates that it is necessary to act in ways that they disagree with? Will they attack environmentalism from within? How can they be real allies when they have so little respect for science? Will they use their arbitrary authority to greenwash their product while failing to genuinely appreciate or support real environmentalism? I think these are legitimate questions and I think that there is a reasonable level of doubt that at minimum requires caution between these strange bedfellows.
Scott Newsom
Pearland, Texas
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David Roberts Posted 3:14 pm
18 Oct 2006
www.grist.org
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jjwfmme Posted 8:26 am
19 Oct 2006
Professor Scorce--
You can easily find plenty of passages in the Bible that are offensive to our modern sense of right and wrong, there's no denying that. The Bible has God telling people to slay innocent people at certain points, even whole villages, if I remember correctly.
From the religion classes I took as an undergraduate, I think I remember theologians describing God as gradually changing from the Old to New Testaments, essentially becoming more compassionate over successive generations, culminating with the New Testament. But I am no theologian, not too much of a reader of theology either (again, I'm an agnostic) so I really can't adequately speak to this issue.
One thing to remember is that we're talking about ancient times. Even in ancient Greece, the origins of western democratic ideals, there's slavery, pedophilia, rampant corruption, completely frivolous and brutal wars, even human sacrifice. But of course, it's still a strong influence on modern Western culture and we're not giving up what they left us any time soon. (If anyone's interested in these subjects I suggest Thomas Cahill's highly readable Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels and Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter.)
That Alternet article that I linked to before suggests Isaiah Berlin as a good alternative "Oxford man" to Richard Dawkins. I agree with that (although the quick and dirty summary of Berlin doesn't work for me). I think Berlin's notions about the Enlightenment were right on target, and he sometimes sounds like George Lakoff (for instance, in this essay: "The Divorce Between the Sciences and the Humanities.")
Anyway, enough obscure references for a post that probably no one is reading by now...
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caniscandida Posted 11:00 am
19 Oct 2006
<<
Even in ancient Greece, the origins of western democratic ideals, there's slavery, pedophilia, rampant corruption, completely frivolous and brutal wars, even human sacrifice.
>>
Slavery, yes. Corruption and wars, yes, but the ancient Greeks were hardly unique in that, were they. But pedophilia? You could not call Greek homoeroticism by that derogatory term, unless you were a homophobe. Human sacrifice? There is no evidence for that; the theme pops up in a couple of myths, but always surrounded by an atmosphere of great horror. Infanticide, by means of the exposure of unwanted children, was apparently done, but was barely accepted, and much frowned upon.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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jjwfmme Posted 12:30 pm
19 Oct 2006
Here's a Wikipedia article on Greek Pederasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_pederasty
Cahill talks about this subject in several places in Sailing the Wine Dark Sea.
I don't mean to be homophobic at all.
And looks like you're right, human sacrifice may have been be a pre-Hellenic thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_religion#Worsh... (5th paragraph down)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice#Human_sacrifice (5th paragraph down)
I was relying on something I had read a long time ago about the Minotaur myths...
(Admittedly, these are Wikipedia articles. If anyone sees anything wrong or missing from these articles, please chime in.)
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:53 pm
19 Oct 2006
But I do reject them- not the entire cultures- but many aspectes of them. The key is that I can pick and choose with a culture because it's created by HUMANS- but with religion we're told that these "holy" books are the work of god and it seems to me that if there was a god and he/she/it was responsible for even 1/10th of the terror in these books we'd want to reject the whole thing because that god was so clearly unjust. If you want to argue that the Bible,etc. are just literature and like decent literature we can pick and choose our favorite passages then so be it- but last time I checked that's not what 90%+ of religion wants people to do.
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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caniscandida Posted 3:57 pm
19 Oct 2006
<<
I'm someone who has actually read the Bible and most other major religious works.
>>
Good for you. That is quite a lot of reading. Not that anyone should ask you for your reading list. It would be more important to observe, though, that there is reading, and then again there is reading.
<<
While no doubt there are beautiful verses and passages that suggest peaceful and compassionate conduct consistent with a progressive environmental ethic, ...
>>
Why do you say "no doubt," right after boasting that you have read the Bible? Have you read the Bible, or haven't you? Do you know which verses and passages you might be referring to, or don't you?
<<
... the god depicted in the Bible acts more often than not like a genocidal terrorist.
>>
There are three especially disgusting theological episodes: the Flood, in which all humanity save for Noah's family, and all animals save for the breeding pairs collected on the Ark, are drowned; the last of the Egyptian plagues, the extermination of the first-born, at the original Passover; and the not altogether consistent mandate to the Israelites to kill off the Canaanites in the Promised Land. The last of these definitely looks like a genocidal ethnic cleansing. The first is an incomprehensibly vast evil, much bigger than genocide. The second is a rather unique story, not exactly genocide, but still a great evil. And followers of the biblical religions, considering these stories, would themselves be guilty of evil if they regard Yahweh as unquestionably a good moral example.
But, "terrorist" is mostly inaccurate; the Passover slaughter is a terrorist act, i.e. intended to inspire terror, but the other two examples are not. Nor is it clear that other examples of biblical violence are primarily intended to inspire terror. And "more often than not" suggests that you can provide us with a carefully reckoned calculation. I rather doubt that the "genocidal terrorist" column would get the most ticks.
<<
No, that wasn't a typo.
>>
Of course not; who would think otherwise? What preceded was ill-informed and narrow-minded and prejudicial, so who would doubt that you really intended to write it?
<<
The god of the Bible routinely slaughters innocents to punish them for the "sins" of their ancestors (anyone know the story of Passover?).
>>
"Routinely"? How many examples can you find?: twenty?; ten?; five?
<<
He has not only destroyed the world already a few times in his anger, but plans to do so again.
>>
"A few times"? Aside from the Flood, I know of no other destruction of the world. Please fill me in. "Plans to do so again"? You mean, like, at the end of time, the Eschata, the Res Novissimae? Do you have any idea what the genre called "eschatology" is about?
<<
In addition, while Jesus is rightly associated with many views of tolerance and peace, such as in the Sermon on the Mount, he is far from the pacifist many claim, according to other accounts in the New Testament.
>>
Thank you for referring to that religious masterpiece, the Sermon on the Mount, which ought to be considered the Christian constitution, found in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapters 5-7. No, we are not entitled to call Jesus technically a "pacifist." But it is not at all clear what you have in mind, saying, "he is far from the pacifist many claim, according to other accounts" in the NT. Which accounts do you mean?
Actually, Sen~or Profesor, I really do not care what you think about the Bible or Christianity, and am not anxiously awaiting your response to any of the questions that I posed here. But I would like to complain about the hypocritical double standard, to be found occasionally in Gristmill and often elsewhere: Inaccuracies are not tolerated in any assertion having to do with the sciences or technology, e.g. earth science, climate science, biology, biodiversity, energy, economics; writers are swiftly corrected if they have written something incorrect; and so most writers, understanding the high standards they must meet, take care to write as unimpeachably as they can. But when it comes to the Bible and Christianity, and religion in general, anything goes; writers feel they have every license to indulge their childish ignorance and prejudices. This is intellectually irresponsible. Religion is as serious an academic field as physics and economics and chemistry and biology. And biblical religion is a serious and important specialization within that field.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:21 pm
19 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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caniscandida Posted 4:21 pm
19 Oct 2006
"pederasty" and "pedophilia" are not at all the same thing, with quite different ethical significances, despite the similarity of their etymologies. Exclusive sexual categorization by orientation, our current model, seems not to have been witnessed in antiquity. Instead, there was generalized what we call bisexuality: everyone could have sexual encounters with persons of either sex, depending on the situation. Pedophilia, a pathological and criminal sexual predation on children, is not witnessed in our principal sources, if at all. Pederasty, the erotic cultivation of a teenage boy by an older man, was common and generally accepted. And, generally, the man had a wife, and the boy would eventually marry a woman when he reached marrying age. Much weirder, really, was that men in classical Athens would marry at around age 30, while their wives were around 14 at the oldest; part of the marriage ceremony was the sorrowful leave-taking of the girl from her dolls.
On other matters: JJW, I am grateful for your participation in this discussion, and agree with you on a great deal.
Yes indeed, the ancient Israelites and the ancient Greeks were both disgracefully warlike. They seem to have shared an early Iron-Age civilization around the eastern Mediterranean, and display many similarities.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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caniscandida Posted 4:35 pm
19 Oct 2006
I "spruced up" nothing. All I did was to point out that, through ignorance and prejudice and the irresponsible license of a double standard, you gravely mischaracterized a body of religious literature.
For my own part, I have no opinion on whether it is a worthwhile project for environmentalists to court evangelical Christians. I do not know either environmentalists or evangelical Christians well enough to express an opinion worthy of consideration. If you have doubts about the effectiveness of that project, good for you, you might be right.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 5:05 pm
19 Oct 2006
www.grist.org
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Jason D Scorse Posted 5:09 pm
19 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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jjwfmme Posted 9:30 pm
19 Oct 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age
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jjwfmme Posted 10:31 pm
19 Oct 2006
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caniscandida Posted 11:34 pm
19 Oct 2006
To JJW: I know, Karl Jaspers, Karen Armstrong and others talk a great talk, but I remain an Axial-Age-denialist. In Israel and Greece, there are a number of distinct cultural punctuations, which have unique, fairly well understood causations, not similar, and not progressing similarly. Why did Greek polytheism persist, in an aesthetic way, while Levantine polytheism in Israel was suppressed by a fierce, intolerant monotheistic cult? What do Homer and Hesiod and Psappho have to do with Amos and Isaiah and Samuel?
It seems entirely coincidental, and rather against the pattern of variety, that the solitary figure of Zarathustra should appear on the dry Iranian plateau. That has always been a curious region, not itself creative, but receptive of influences whence new ideas could be fashioned.
In the Chinese river valleys, the respective followers of Confucius and Lao-Tse were profitably quarrelling, probably inheriting quarrels much more ancient than themselves, and we only start to hear about them at this time.
In India, sure, the Vedic tradition provoked reactions of various sorts, including the Upanishads, proto-Jainism and proto-Buddhism. But the Vedas did not hold the same position in India as the Homeric, or larger mythological, traditions did in Greece, so the reactions in the two regions are hardly comparable.
One might add (and perhaps Jaspers said something about this) that the great Mesoamerican calendar was invented around this time, either in older Olmec centers on the Gulf coast or in younger Zapotec centers in Oaxaca. The Mesoamerican pantheon was probably of earlier genesis, surely Olmec, and was diffused at this period.
The Andes region has been ever a difficult cultural region to parse. And I shall not claim to say anything about it. Except that potatoes are happy food; and llamas are very cute. But they probably knew that before the "axial age."
This all strikes me as a huge coincidence, and nothing more. India and China have these great, revolutionary thinkers. But what about Mesopotamia and Egypt? Surely we have to ask why the Axial Age left them in the dust. Greece and Israel were peripheral, and only came into positions of influence rather later. Same with Iran, which has become the major cultural power in central Asia with the rise of Islam: no thanks to Zarathustra.
To say nothing of Stanley Kubrick.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 1:37 am
20 Oct 2006
This is true of most people, though, isn't it? The number of people genuinely interested in and active on environmental issues is fairly small. That's precisely why the effort is being made to persuade other groups to join the fight.
The fact that they're not already persuaded doesn't strike me as a good reason not to persuade them. Or am I missing something?
www.grist.org
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Visaudiokin Posted 2:21 am
20 Oct 2006
This is probably all obvious enough to you, but I say it anyway because I think you're missing the point. What is the purpose of this article? If you're skeptical about whether Christians will take a turn for the better, fine. But what's your point? Where does that leave us?
If you don't think that seeking the support of Christians is going to be worthwhile, then don't seek it. But don't put yourself in opposition to Christians. Doing so will only frustrate Christians who might otherwise be open to being convinced.
And by the way, environmental issues are very different from the abortion issue. There is absolutely no reason to assume that because Christians generally oppose abortion they also must oppose environmentalism. There is simply no connection whatsoever.
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jjwfmme Posted 2:25 am
20 Oct 2006
I haven't gotten to Karen Armstrong's recent work yet, but it's literally next on my list. I enjoyed her previous work. The Battle for God is a compelling take on fundamentalism, and I find it mostly convincing.
Originally I thought the Axial Age theory was kind of loose and baggy. It's like you say, what do these disparate cultural events have to do with each other? And the period they talk about is pretty long.
But then I heard the case made that there were certain common things going on throughout the world at that time: advances in agricultural technology, political consolidation under monarchs, a more stable (and surely more demanding) collective life.
And it's interesting that Christianity throughout uses images of inverted political power-- "the kingdom of God is within you," "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum" depicted on the cross, and of course the crown of thorns. And then the Buddha was conspicuously told he could be a very powerful king--by his parents, by the tempter Mara, which he rejected each time. And also the Axial Age's Old Testament prophets were shown to be increasingly speaking truth to Hebrew leaders. (I'm not saying these movements were political, but maybe there were some common "worldly" things that were in the background of each one.)
Then, of course, there is the more obvious fact that all of these people in the axial age were preaching compassion to fellow humans. Mend fences with your neighbor before you make your offerings at temple, etc.
So I think a case can be made that the time was ripe for these kinds of figures to appear and say the types of things they did. But again, I haven't read Armstrong's book yet (or Jaspers' for that matter). I came across the theory in secondary sources. So I can't really give a well-informed opinion at this point...
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:39 am
20 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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atreyger Posted 2:58 am
20 Oct 2006
Reaching out to the Christian right will put the environmental destruction up on the list of things, and make the politicians rethink their approach. Talking about abortion, gay marriage, etc. is really not necessary. If the Bush administration was one of the greatest environmentalist ones on record, then what does it matter to this blog whether or not he's against gay marriage? That would have to be a different blog or post.
Backing this up with an example: Britain's parties are tripping head over heels to prove how environmental they are without regard for the rest of their issues.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:13 am
20 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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Visaudiokin Posted 3:26 am
20 Oct 2006
I'm not saying that you're creating something that isn't already there. I realize that positions on environmental issues have long been divided along the same partisan lines as abortion, gay rights, and other issues. But that no longer needs to be the case, and it is certainly not an arrangement which needs to be perpetuated.
Christians simply need to be educated about environmental issues, just like everybody else. The advantage is that when Christians on the whole begin to become more educated about the environment, their level of organization can and will be a major factor in mobilizing real changes. Again, it is a mistake to lump environmentalism with issues like abortion. Doing so enforces the idea of many that environmentalism is a partisan issue.
If it helps, no, whether or not homosexuals are allowed to marry or obtain a similar legal status is not more important to me than the environment. Like most people, I vote for the candidates whose platforms I tend to agree with most across the board. Some issues are more important than others, true, but no one issue trumps all others by any means.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:45 am
20 Oct 2006
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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bookerly Posted 4:26 am
20 Oct 2006
It is great to see the comments from Visaudiokin that no one issues trumps others, and that voting for environmental candidates is important to at least one member of the Christian right.
But, we should also be realistic. The worst candidates for the environment are from the Christian right.
And we should note, that many of them use issues such as abortion, gay rights, immigration and other so-called "social issues" to get elected. They do this, because they believe that such issues trump issues like the environment, minimum wage, health care and the global economy.
Oh, yeah, and "security" from "terror".
I hope that Visaudiokin can convince like minded brethren to move the environment higher up the list. Most polls put it lower than ten, a not very important position (and that is for ALL voters).
It is nice to say that environmentalists should reach out to the Christian right, but they tend to be least likely to vote for environmental candidates (based on past history and current trends).
Why not reach out to the Christian center instead?
Why not reach out to minority Christians (you know, non-whites) instead?
If we need to reach Christians, both of those groups are about as numerous as the Christian right, and probably easier to convince.
(Ironically, when we discuss Christians and the Christian right, we always seem to be discussing white Christians, who are very different politically from non-white Christians (based on voting patterns)).
There are a lot of moderate and liberal Christians (especially when you include non-white ones) whose views are more open to environmentalism (for those who haven't already embraced it).
Shouldn't we start with them?
patrick
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Visaudiokin Posted 7:11 am
20 Oct 2006
You are most certainly correct that as of now "the worst candidates for the environment are from the... right." I would generalize it more than you do by eliminating the "Christian" qualifier, as I think that the right-wing ignorance of environmental issues is not limited to the Christians on that end of the political spectrum. But realistically speaking, yes, the right wing has a terrible track record in terms of environmental concerns.
And realistically speaking, yes, there are a number of issues important to Christian conservatives that will always affect their voting decisions. But then, that is true for almost everyone. Few people, left-wing or right-wing, Christian or otherwise, would be very likely to vote for an environmentally strong candidate with whom they disagree on every other major issue. I think we can all agree that it is a rare individual who votes according to environmental concerns and ignores all else.
I don't suggest that we should put on rose-colored glasses and ignore the facts. Christian conservatives on the whole are currently not paying much attention to environmental issues; they're not doing much to solve our problems. We can call a spade a spade. Furthermore, right-wing candidates as a rule are still ignoring the issues.
But this is precisely the reason I believe that efforts to educate Christians about the environment are valuable. If Christians start paying attention to environmental issues, the natural result will be that conservative candidates are forced to start taking those issues seriously. Because it will be something that their constituents care about - and this is certainly not necessarily because the constituents are Christians, but because the issues are important.
The worst thing you can do, I believe, is alienate the Christian right. Allow environmentalism to remain in opposition to Christian conservativism and you are forced to continue to seek environmental reform in spite of the Christian right.
I mentioned earlier that I tend to disagree with your conclusions. I have two reasons:
By specifically targeting the Christian left or Christian moderates, there's a good chance you're preaching to the choir (so to speak).
I'm not sure there's a huge difference between targeting the Christian left and targeting Christians generally.
I should say, I acknowledge that I could be wrong about any of this. I simply tend to think that the environment does not need to be a divisive issue.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 8:21 am
20 Oct 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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JackH Posted 11:56 am
20 Oct 2006
That's BS. There's a massive, massive difference between respect and agreement. Respecting arguments you disagree with prevents you from falling into intellectual hubris, willful ignorance, and self-satisfaction - qualities which, and there's no way to put it delicately, you've shown in spades in your arguments against religion. You dismiss the opinions of quite a large number of historians, including atheist and agnostic ones, about the origins of the Enlightenment because... what? You just don't like the sound of it? Your arguments have an extremely retro feel to them, like reading some late 19th century dusty old tract. A few provocative insults at God, some red herrings, profound misunderstandings of religion, a little bit of looking down your nose, and there you go. You can't think people haven't heard this before, can you? Honestly, it's been done many, many, many, many times before, and with far more style and wit. I think a bit of study of what you oppose would do you good - it would give your arguments a lot more heft.
I absolutely respect your skills as an economist. And, believe it or not, I respect your arguments, because without respecting them, I'll fall victim to the fallacy you've fallen into.
You don't have to respect me or my opinions. But it would do you good to learn how to respect differing opinions, so as not to underestimate your opponents - to study those arguments in order to refute them. Else you'll keep talking a lot about things you know very little about.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 12:31 pm
20 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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Brudaimonia Posted 4:24 pm
20 Oct 2006
The boundary between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in religious tolerance is clearly articulated in Sam Harris's The End of Faith:
It should be easy enough to see that belief in the full efficacy of prayer, for instance, becomes an emphatically public concern the moment it is actually put into practice: the moment a surgeon lays aside his worldly instruments and attempts to suture his patients with prayer, or a pilot tries to land a passenger jet with nothing but repetitions of the word "Hallelujah" applied to the controls, we are swiftly delivered from the provinces of private faith to those of a criminal court. (p. 44)
Which makes clear Jason's point that religion is not a sound basis for public policy. Almost by definition a religion based on a gallimaufry of diverse folklore (such as the three main monotheistic religions, plus many others) cannot be a sound facilitator of universally applied laws.
So at some point we have to say, "No, certain religious beliefs simply are not compatible with certain environmental precepts." If you truly believe that the Rapture is coming in your lifetime (as 22% of Americans do), then why must you worry about the state of the earth after that? Who will be on earth after Judgement Day? I'm not sure if a library of books on religious tolerance could get the fundamentalist out of this "James Watt dilemma."
Herein lies one of the many philosophical mines for environmentalist in the field of organizing fundamentalist Christians: you cannot get a Bible literalist to care about preserving habitat if the Rapture will make such a principle irrelevant when, for instance, all the things described in Revelation 8:6-13 happen to the earth.
I agree with the practical side of the argument: environmentalists most certainly should try to reach out to evangelicals. But, to the extent that the principles of environmentalism are contradicted by the principles of a ritualistic, organized religion, either we will fail in our attempt, or the believer will change his or her principles.
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AdamSelene Posted 8:29 am
21 Oct 2006
These guys (there are precious few women in the club) grew up under an Established Anglican system that exacted a good deal of pietistic submission from its students. (I was shocked to find out that the State schools in London STILL have manditory Anglican chapel for the better edification of their agnostic and Moslem students.)
So, stuckups like Dawkins, thinking 'turnabout is fair play,' can get more than a little rude when they set out to demonstrate that they have as much right to expect the same instant, awestruck deference due their Phds, as the Clerics expect for their Collars. And, of course, while British can be awfully NEGLIGENT about going to church and saying their prayers ... running into someone who treats Reason as a RELIGION ... well, it seems blasphemous, to them -- and the law, customs, and good manners are on their side.
Dawkins did make this distinction: "I did not say Christians are ignorant; I said CREATIONISTS are ignorant." -- but it didn't seem to help anything.
Of course, a growing number of American Christians do seem feel "offend one, offend all," when someone speaks ill of James Dobson, for example. And along the same line, seem far more sensitive to percieved insults from non believers, than to actual injuries, particularly when inflicted on non-believers.
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jscorse Posted 9:47 am
21 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S.
htt://voicesofreason.info
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caniscandida Posted 5:32 pm
21 Oct 2006
I entirely agree that atheists are a persecuted group, and are de facto disenfranchised in many ways. E.g., the way that the case to have the words "under God" struck from the Pledge of Allegiance, brought by that Bay-area atheist father before the Supreme Court, was roundly mocked and dismissed by legal experts in many media sources, was quite disgraceful. If I were a judge, and this case came before me, I would certainly have called for those words to be dropped, theist Christian that I am.
I also agree that it is not at all clear why any Christians should feel a "sense of victimization" in this country. That is, I acknowledge that many Christians do feel it, but the feeling seems founded in a religiosity that is totally alien to me, and nothing that I can recognize as true Christianity.
It is indisputable that the Bill of Rights guarantees them their right to practice their religion freely. No problem there. But then, they seem to claim that the free practice of their religion involves the preaching of it openly, and expressing it publicly in other ways, to the point where it trespasses on the privacy and dignity of their neighbors. It is indeed their right to say what they want in any totally free public context. But do they not see that when they intrude their preaching and their prayer into a constrained governmental context (e.g., as with certain evangelical Christian military chaplains at the Air Force Academy, who want us to believe that in order for them to practise their religion, they must be permitted to preach to young people of all denominations and backgrounds, even while wearing the Air Force uniform), they come across as a species of Taliban? Have they no sense of the dread they inspire?
That said, it is not prudent of you, dear Jason, to refer to the doctrines of biblical religion as "a fairy tale." Nor is it courteous. I have no doubt that you sincerely believe that. (And of course I disagree with you, but that is not important right now.) But considering that your words in Gristmill are extremely public, indeed, are global, you may wish to refrain from saying such things, which presumably are intended to offend and provoke.
Your correspondents are, many of them, thoughtful and respectful people, including Visaudiokin, JackH and Brudaimonia. You owe them sincerity, to be sure, but also the consideration that their thoughtful and respectful participation in this dialogue deserves.
And, with respect to prudence, you might consider that, writing as you do from within the Gristmill flock, you are in some way a representative of all environmentalists. It would of course be inaccurate to think of you as in any way representative or typical, but you might easily be perceived that way.
I have long admired these sentences:
<<
The comments of Gristmill users reflect the opinions of those individuals only, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of Grist, its staff, its board members, their psychotherapists, or their aestheticians. Got it?
>>
What art! Written by some anonymous Horace, who no doubt drinks much better coffee than I do, and who gets to see orcas and snow-capped volcanoes.
(I had to let my aesthetician go. I discovered that she was inflating the botox bill, had authorized that Clairol be used for my weekly blond rinse instead of that top-of-the-line stuff from Monaco, and was about to order a remake of the apartment with a Damien Hirst theme -- the old stuff, that wasn't selling, so was on clearance, moldy cow pieces, remains of bats, stinky sharks. And don't get me started on how she made it a hell on earth for that poor Ukrainian depilatrice, a true artist with the hot wax.)
Hopefully, dear Jason, it is quite clear to one and all that not only do you not speak for Grist, neither do you speak for any of us who read and write to Gristmill, neither for environmentalists in general. Congratulations, you are definitely tui generis. What an American hero!
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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jjwfmme Posted 2:51 am
22 Oct 2006
http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=98&cid=367&i...
I think it says quite a bit about how paranoia about religion is unwise. A position of principled tolerance is much smarter (not to mention the best informed). JackH makes a good point that you can categorically disagree with something and still give it due respect. (If you have time, I also recommend listening to the whole dialog this clip came from, which is quite interesting.)
With regard to Brudaimonia's comment above, what the heck are "the principles of a ritualistic, organized religion"? Are there such monolithic "principles" that make all "ritualistic, organized religion" intrinsically anti-environmental? This is the type of thing that makes me think we're looking at a kind of Bertrand Russell-style hyper-rationalist ideology, instead of a well-informed, considered opinion.
Again, I think the problem is fundamentalism, not religion. As for the issue of religion and practicality that Brudaimonia brings up, Karen Armstrong addresses this in her work. And I think she has some more points to make in general that are very relevant to this thread:
Secularists and fundamentalists sometimes seem trapped in an escalating spiral of hostility and recrimination. If fundamentalists must evolve a more compassionate assessment of their enemies in order to be true to their religious traditions, secularists must also be more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance, and respect for humanity which characterises modern culture at its best.
As for Jason's observation that "greatest prejudice in American society is reserved for atheists." This is true in certain circles, but not others (most of academia for instance). And then there's this old story:
When told that India was the most religious country in the world and Sweden the most secularized, the eminent sociologist Peter Berger is said to have replied, "Then the United States must be a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes."
Anyway, this isn't true lately (and I'm as unhappy about that as anyone here). But I think it would be a good thing if the Swedes and the Indians had a bit more understanding for each other.
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jscorse Posted 3:31 am
22 Oct 2006
Since all of the religions of the world hold mutually exclusive claims to the truth, by definition 99% of them must be wrong.
*Although of course it is likely that 100% of them are wrong, but we don't even need a discussion about religion to arrive at the 99% figure- it is simply definitional.
J.S.
J.S.
htt://voicesofreason.info
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jscorse Posted 3:46 am
22 Oct 2006
this one is great- i encourage everyone to read it who is interested in this debate
Ok...tomorrow I'm back to writing about the environment..sometimes I forget what started all of this...
J.S.
J.S.
htt://voicesofreason.info
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caniscandida Posted 4:43 am
22 Oct 2006
But, I have a very minor quibble. In doubting the value of Dawkins' relentless examination of the doctrine of God as Creator, he perhaps underestimates the importance of that doctrine in the New Testament. True, it is not mentioned often, but those texts where it is found are theologically foundational: e.g., the Hymn to the Logos at the beginning of the Gospel according to John, and the Hymn to Christ the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1:12-20. It is fair to say that that theological concept has been much more influential in Eastern Orthodoxy, very often overlooked despite its being a major and most ancient part of the Christian Church, than in Western Christianity, including Catholicism and the countless forms of Protestantism.
Thanks also for the Russell Shaw piece, on "India" and "Sweden," which has an interesting discussion of the Supreme Court's attitude toward the "under God" inclusion in the Pledge of Allegiance. Ronald Dworkin recently discussed this, and other polarizing issues, such as same-sex marriage, brilliantly, in the New York Review of Books, four issues ago I think.
On distinguishing fundamentalism from religion: Yes indeed, the distinction must be made, and insisted upon. But that brings up the very interesting argument of Sam Harris, that it is we tolerant, moderate religionists who are the greater problem in the world today.
There is nothing surprising that our Jason should turn out to be a Sam Harris aficionado. I find Harris fascinating, and look forward to reading the linked piece, in a bit.
Jason is quite right to point out the deep divisions within Christianity, and the historic mistrust that the various denominations feel toward one another. That is a scandal, and greatly to be lamented. In the present context, though, it is significant because it poses a bit of an intellectual problem for anti-religionists: Just what is it that they have in mind, when they refer to "Christianity"?
Of course, Jason's mentioning of the various religions' "mutually exclusive claims to the truth" is on one level unobjectionable. On a deeper level, though, it is sorely limited by its "Book of British Birds" sense of what truth in religion is intended to be.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
Brudaimonia Posted 8:04 am
22 Oct 2006
Reply to a Christian
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caniscandida Posted 8:26 am
22 Oct 2006
Somebody (sort of?) famous, whose name of course I cannot remember, defined religion as "that which makes a good person do something evil." And that is clearly in line with Sam Harris' argument; and I agree. But then somebody else who is (perhaps a bit less?) famous (Jon Meacham?; Bill Moyers?; somebody else?) offered in response an alternative definition of religion: it is "that which makes a bad person do something good." Whatever their names are, they are both right.
Anyway, it is certainly true that morality must be accepted as not founded in belief in divine sanctions. Cf. the Euthyphro Dilemma.
And the best Christian thought has always recognized that non-orthodox, non-Christians and atheists are most certainly capable of virtuous acts and virtuous, God-pleasing lives. And to that there is abundant testimony. Cf. Salahu'd-Din, Saladin, history's most famous Kurd, and one of history's most famous Muslims, conqueror of Jerusalem from the Crusaders (see the not especially noteworthy movie by Ridley Scott, "Kingdom of Heaven"), and adversary of Richard the Lion-Hearted: Christian authors could not help but admire his chivalry, courtesy and nobility.
What Sam (and Jason) might want to talk about at some point, is how atheists go about discovering a foundation for their own moral conduct and ethical values and judgments. I do not deny at all that such a true and respectable foundation exists. But it would be useful for religionists to learn how intelligent and articulate atheists present it.
On environmental things: If all this discussion comes down to is US politics, and the electorate, and who is likely to vote for which candidates from which party for green-related reasons (not unimportant matters, to be sure), it strikes me as rather off the point, ethics-wise. Let us first understand how people evaluate the various environmental issues, according to their respective ethical codes. And let us encourage everyone, in a respectful way, to give a positive evaluation of those issues high priority. But let us not try to exploit people for the sake of an electoral strategy.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 8:47 am
22 Oct 2006
Clearly, we can think of objective sources of moral order that do not require the existence of a law-giving God. In The End of Faith, I argued that questions of morality are really questions about happiness and suffering. If there are objectively better and worse ways to live so as to maximize happiness in this world, these would be objective moral truths worth knowing. Whether we will ever be in a position to discover these truths and agree about them cannot be known in advance (and this is the case for all questions of scientific fact). But if there are psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-being--and why wouldn't there be?--then these laws are potentially discoverable. Knowledge of these laws would provide an enduring basis for an objective morality. In the meantime, everything about human experience suggests that love is better than hate for the purposes of living happily in this world. This is an objective claim about the human mind, the dynamics of social relations, and the moral order of our world.
www.grist.org
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caniscandida Posted 4:13 pm
22 Oct 2006
Sam Harris wrote:
<<
But if there are psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-being--and why wouldn't there be?--then these laws are potentially discoverable.
>>
Umm, sure, I guess, why not? But then, if these laws were indeed "psychophysical," hence subject to evolutionary processes, hence present in modern human beings only because they are somehow adaptive, should we not therefore expect that a great majority of human beings would intuitively recognize them as being worthy of obedience? Should we not expect much less practical radical disagreement on what acceptable conduct consists of, than what we actually observe?
<<
Knowledge of these laws would provide an enduring basis for an objective morality.
>>
So what do we have here?: Sam Harris turns out to be the love-child of Plato and John Stuart Mill? Or are they just the grandparents on one side, and the grandparents on the other side are Immanuel Kant and Epicurus?
Anyway, is this not rather frigid? Can anyone honestly believe that once the philosophers and neuroscientists have discovered what these ethical laws are, all of us dummies are going to leap with joy, and cry, "Of course! This is how we must live our lives henceforth!"?
I was expecting something more historical. What examples do we have of virtuous conduct in the past, separated from metaphysical considerations and divine sanctions? Certain strains of Confucianism, and Buddhism, perhaps? I wonder.
The only clear examples that I can think of are the valiant, indeed heroic, actions of secular, non-practising Jews in this country, in the last century, fighting on behalf of workers and organized labor earlier on, then on behalf of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s and later.
Such virtue was present, internationally, in the original Jewish sympathy for the Marxist/Leninist program, then in the Zionist program. Unfortunately both these efforts got muddled in terrific moral embarrassments.
Our beloved correspondent Legume Sam, from whom we have heard nothing in months, to our great sorrow, is apparently an heir to this impressive legacy.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 5:34 pm
22 Oct 2006
Anyway, is this not rather frigid? Can anyone honestly believe that once the philosophers and neuroscientists have discovered what these ethical laws are, all of us dummies are going to leap with joy, and cry, "Of course! This is how we must live our lives henceforth!"?
In my view the power of clear, reasoned thought, intense reflection, the scientific method, and rationality are the most creative and powerful forces the world has ever known! They are the entithesis of cold and frigid!! They have unleashed the greatest powers and creativity within us, they are the drivers of progress. I can't think of anything less frigid and cold, while allegiance to ancient texts and language like "though shalt" and commandments and edicts sounds completely empty to me.
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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jjwfmme Posted 10:25 pm
22 Oct 2006
One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational.
When it comes to human suffering, is irrationality really the enemy? And I would say a rational life is not necessarily a fulfilled one, and somehow in our heart of hearts we know that. The voice of reason says one thing, but your voice of reason is not the only thing going on. I think Isaiah Berlin had some good points to make in his essay The Counter-Enlightenment. Man is not exclusively a rational being, and to think so takes a degree of naivety:
Our lives and activities collectively and individually are expressions of our attempts to survive, satisfy our desires, understand each other and the past out of which we emerge. A utilitarian interpretation of the most essential human activities is misleading. They are, in the first place, purely expressive; to sing, to dance, to worship, to speak, to fight, and the institutions which embody these activities, comprise a vision of the world. Language, religious rites, myths, laws, social, religious, juridical institutions, are forms of self-expression, of wishing to convey what one is and strives for...
Not that there isn't a place for rational thought; no doubt it's a powerful thing, but there's a kind of hubris in overestimating it. What's the saying? To the person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Berlin's essay says a number of other things that make for interested in reading in the context of this discussion. As was said before, if you try to yolk your hyper-rationalist thought with environmentalism, I don't think it's going to work.
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jjwfmme Posted 10:37 pm
22 Oct 2006
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:21 am
23 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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jjwfmme Posted 3:36 am
23 Oct 2006
What I'm saying, and I think what Berlin wants to say, is that a one-size-fits-all rationalism, prescribed to everyone and everything and applied everywhere in life, does not work. If you tell people to give up their religious traditions and stick Russell, Dawkins, in their libraries, you will alienate them. Not everyone is a positivist. Nor should they be.
But again, I think someone who's a humanist can lead a very good, ethical life. Let a thousand flowers bloom. I think that kind of tolerant, respectful approach is following the best legacy of the Enlightenment.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:58 am
23 Oct 2006
There is this misperception out there that without religion we would all become automotons under reasoned discourse- this is a myth- nothing could be farther from the truth. We would still have various ways of thinking about life, different values, and cultures. What would be gone, however, would be the notion that someone could simly say "god told me to do x,y,z or this holy book says x,y,z are right" as justification for ethics and values. Rationality demands more than that, but it does not lead to a uniform or monolithic set of values.
That being said, it allows for the establishment of a set of core principles- human rights- that are non-negotiable- based on reasoned principles.
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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jjwfmme Posted 5:19 am
23 Oct 2006
psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-being... provid[ing] an enduring basis for an objective morality,
which to me sounds an awful lot like the
one set of universal and unalterable principles govern[ing] the world for theists, deists, and atheists, for optimists and pessimists, puritans, primitivists, and believers in progress
that the philosophes proposed (according to Berlin).
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caniscandida Posted 6:35 am
23 Oct 2006
Neither reason nor rationality is frigid. They are too much fun.
Religion-bashing can also be fun. I love that bit in Voltaire's "Zadig," where everyone is looking to see with which foot Zadig enters the temple, both those who believe that the temple must be stepped into only with the left foot, and their bitter adversaries, who believe that the temple must be stepped into only with the right foot. So the ingenious Zadig leaps over the threshold, and lands on both feet at once.
But in dear old Sam's speculation, that business about biological laws does not look like rationality, it looks like totalitarianism. I share the caution of JJW.
There is nothing objectionably irrational about religion, in itself. The greatest religious creativity is founded on the rational faculties: e.g., Attic tragedy, Platonism, the Talmud, the Hadith, the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Dante's Divine Comedy.
The choice for a religion is no more irrational, in general, than is the choice for atheism.
The requirement, by professional atheists, for "evidence," is itself unreasonable, based on a misunderstanding of religious truth. As Terry Eagleton wrote in the piece from the LRB that JJW forwarded, on those such as Dawkins who have problems with the doctrine of the personal nature of God, it is rather like asking, petulantly, "Granted, Tony Blair is an octopus: then why doesn't he have eight legs?"
Religion is one of the four great ways of knowledge, along with Art, Philosophy and Science. Each of those ways is distinct. Each is necessary, for humanity to live in balance. The absence of religion is inconceivable. Almost every human being who has ever lived has been religious, in one way or another. Atheism is a new-fangled, not especially rational invention.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:40 am
23 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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caniscandida Posted 7:34 am
23 Oct 2006
<<
rationality determines that rape is wrong, murder is wrong, just as does most religions- do you have a problem with some basic moral precepts?
>>
("Just as DO," sweetheart.) No, rationality does not determine those things. It depends on where you start from, and locating the starting point involves a leap of faith. Why should you care if your neighbor is raped, or murdered? Because she has a "right" not to be raped or murdered? And you are concerned for the preservation of your own "right" against those things? Or, because you recognize something precious and inviolable about her? Where do you get that?
Where do "rights" come from? What is so rational about professing the existence of "rights"? Why is the assertion that sensitive animals have "rights" so strongly resisted by very rational people?
<<
I don't get it. Isn't it better to get them through reason then because someone says the creator of the universe wrote them down in a book?
>>
"Better"? I do not understand. If the end is good, what the hell, who cares how you got there. And if the Creator of the Universe and Inspirer of the Book understood from a long time ago what the good end should be, why not show that Being a bit of gratitude?
<<
Isn't what religious people argue AGAINST is the supposed moral relativism of non-religious ethics?
>>
Well, some religious people do indeed go on boringly about that. E.g. Pope Benedict XVI. But as Alasdair MacIntyre says, there is no such thing as moral relativism, actually.
<<
Isn't it a GOOD sign that rationality can help us arrive at some basic universal precepts?
>>
Perhaps. Rationality can be used for good or for ill. See Dante's Inferno, and the disposition of Hell: the souls of the damned who are deepest down, closest to Satan, are those who sinned against God by abusing their rationality.
To assume that the fruits of "rationality" are automatically, inherently, necessarily good things is an irrational prejudice.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Jason D Scorse Posted 11:22 am
23 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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caniscandida Posted 1:46 pm
23 Oct 2006
I have no objection to the underlying sentiment of this assertion:
<<
as far as prejudice goes, there is no greater prejudice in the world than from the religious against other religions and the non-religious.
>>
It is indisputably true that the mistrusts and hostilities prejudicially felt by members of one religious group towards others outside that group have caused terrific injustices and acts of violence.
But how do we compare the dimensions of prejudice?
It seems that most of the conflicts and blood-lettings of the modern period have not been caused by religious prejudice.
The enslavers of Africans in the modern period found a biblical justification for their actions, but the slavery itself was not motivated by religious prejudice.
The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution both involved the overturning of traditional religious institutions, and the execution of priests and monks and nuns, but they were not, essentially, religious movements.
World Wars I and II, the bloodiest wars ever fought, were neither of them religious conflicts.
The Jews that were the victims of the Holocaust were identified by the Nazis according to their ethnicity, not according to their religion. Many secular, non-practising Jews were rounded up and killed. The philosopher Edith Stein, a Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a nun (and is now a canonized saint), was captured and killed.
The contempt that Japanese imperialists felt toward the conquered peoples of East Asia, in the 1930s and 1940s, leading to unspeakably brutal acts of violence, was not based on religious prejudice.
The prejudice that many Americans felt toward the Japanese during WWII, leading to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, was inflamed by such religious items as the cult of the emperor and the kamikaze practice, but was not essentially religious.
The Zionist/Israeli expulsion and oppression of Palestinians, who are most of them Muslim but many of them Christian, are not based on religious prejudice.
The Cuban missile crisis, in Autumn, 1962, was a peak in ideological mistrust, but was not based on religious prejudice.
Similarly, the US involvement in Vietnam was not based on religious prejudice.
The genocide in Rwanda, 1994, was not based on religious prejudice.
The current genocide in Darfur, Sudan, is not based on religious prejudice.
I can think of three episodes of horrific bloodshed, in the 20th century, in which religious affiliation was a significant factor: the Partition of India and Pakistan in the late 1940s (Hindu vs. Muslim); the Troubles in Northern Ireland, starting in the 1960s (Catholic vs. Protestant); the division of the former Yugoslavia, in the 1990s (Catholic vs. Orthodox vs. Muslim). In each of these, the specificity of respective religious beliefs did not matter. What mattered was how religion was used as a marker of ethnic or social identity.
So, in sum, I think your superlative expression regarding religious prejudice is perhaps not altogether justified.
That said, I heartily endorse your project to reduce the influence of the Christian Religious Right in US politics. Their sense of persecution and their sense of entitlement strike me as pretty absurd; their moral agenda is positively cruel. So, best wishes! Felicitaciones! Coraggio!
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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amazingdrx Posted 8:50 pm
23 Oct 2006
You need some sort of spiritual connection. Life is art, not science. Sure art uses reason, but reason is not the main element, it is only a limited, but very useful tool.
Progressive spirituality of all stripes supports reform. Regressive de-evolutionary, authoritarian organized religion supports only a dead end, the politically and financially bankrupt status quo. Armageddon, bottomline thinking.
Kill that last whale and sell the oil, the short term is the only thing that matters.
There's your dead enders Rummi.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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willa Posted 11:42 pm
23 Oct 2006
It just ain't so.
Almost all art that you hear of, if you're not a specialist in it, turns out to be a series of high notes, the best of the best. Thus, it seems utterly unrelated. Raphael has nothing that we can identify to do with, say, Monet, beyond both being painters. It can seem, therefore, that they both had a sort of genius beyond our inferior ability to understand. The truth of the matter is, in every case I know of, the recognized "geniuses" and "great artists" were standing, as Einstein (I think?) said, on the shoulders of giants, which is why you can still see them through the forest of now-forgotten artists whose work was so similar. People do innovate, and it's often not through what anyone would call "science", but it is rational, the work people do that gets called art.
Great creativity is the ability to synthesize a wide enough range of things well enough to turn them into a new thing that's actually new, and actually better. It's also the art of not getting caught. I don't think any of that is unimportant (note that I didn't say "Great creativity is merely..."), but I do think it's rational. Then again, I majored in srt history, so I might be biased. :)
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willa Posted 11:43 pm
23 Oct 2006
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jjwfmme Posted 12:56 am
24 Oct 2006
"The religious." I've heard that phrase used repeatedly in a number of Internet atheist forums. The tuna net of that abstraction, if you will, is brimming with dolphins.
I know and have known many religious people. I've had good friends and relatives who are Catholic, Protestant, and Buddhist-- people who had profound connections to their traditions, and connections by family and by conversion. And I can tell you that very few of those people have had what I would call prejudice toward the non-religious or other religions. And none of them, that I can remember, had a lack of respect for toward the non-religious or other religions.
I'm sorry that I can't say the same about Professor Scorce.
Now, in this thread I've been using my own abstraction. I've been calling people "hyper rationalists." To tell you the truth I've been nervous about using this abstraction. I had a general idea about it, but wasn't quite sure. I thought I'd have to work harder with Professor Scorce to prove that there's this "type" out there doing this sloppy, "card carrying rationalist" thinking.
But it's been interesting. Professor Scorce has practically demonstrated my arguments for me. He's been like a big juicey tuna swimming into the net of my abstraction, no problem. He's played the exact script written for him in Isaiah Berlin's essays. It's been a shock, really.
The thing about these Internet atheist types who use terms like "the religious" is that the conversation never gets sophisticated at all. In all their contemptuous talk about "fairy tales", you never hear anything like, for instance, S. T. Coleridge's distinction between fancy and imagination. You never hear about the possibility that non-realist descriptions of things might be more than simply "false statements about reality [to be] corrected by later rational criticism." And good gosh, if you are enough of a lesser mortal to be concerned about the transcendent (as the venerable professor Hustom Smith discusses in this video) you are simply beyond hope. Stay home. If you go to participate in an environmental event, you'll be seated at the kiddie table.
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Brudaimonia Posted 2:36 am
24 Oct 2006
I don't think you should dismiss your nervousness over using the term "hyper-rationalism," because, contrary to what you claim, I don't believe Jason or anyone else on this long thread fits that description. Neither, for that matter, does Sam Harris.
The final chapter of the latter's The End of Faith, called "Experiments in Consciousness," discusses what transcendental possibilities may be available without casting rationalism aside. He talks about breaking free, consciously, of the sense of "I" -- our notion of self-distinct-from-world -- through meditation and reflection. If we can mentally reach that point, then such an experience is felt, and real insofar as it is felt.
This is radically different than a "narrative" religion (a term I use) where the believer is supposed to believe that certain things happened historically, e.g. Christ ascending into heaven. This is the constricting thing about the Big Three monotheistic religions (and others): your spiritual capacities are called on to worship some figure from folklore, rather than being focused back inward to the source of those capacities.
I admit to some naivete in the details of Buddhist meditation, but I believe that, when meditating, if one has trouble at first focusing on one's self, then it helps to focus on one common physical object, like a lamp or flower. Such a "primitive" focus is only a booster step towards more refined, self-focused reflection. But this is equivalent to the ultimate focus for traditional monotheism. The believer is supposed to focus on some historical figure, e.g. God, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.
We can do better than that. We can do better if we are open to reflection without the constraints of dogmatic baggage. In this sense, mysticism in a rational context (like Harris's mysticism) is more, dare I say, transcendental, than the realms of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism (and others).
Incidentally, Harris was criticized by fundamentalist atheists (i.e. the real hyperrationalists) for writing this last chapter. But I don't think anyone on this board has been critical of the possibilities of mysticism in a rational context.
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jjwfmme Posted 5:47 am
28 Oct 2006
Most of the Axial philosophers had no interest whatsoever in dogma or metaphysics. A person's theological beliefs were a matter of total indifference to somebody such as the Buddha. Confucius resolutely refused even to discuss theology, claiming that it was distracting and damaging. Others argued that it was immature, unrealistic and perverse to look for the kind of absolute certainty that many expect religion to provide. Indeed, when philosophers did begin to teach a militant orthodoxy, it was a sign that the Axial Age was drawing to a close.
What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Religion was about doing things that changed you at a profound level. Before the Axial Age, ritual and animal sacrifice had been central to the religious quest. You experienced the divine in sacred dramas that, like a great theatrical experience today, introduced you to another level of existence. The Axial sages changed this; they still valued ritual, but gave it a new ethical significance and put morality at the heart of the spiritual life. The only way you could encounter what they called 'God,' 'Nirvana,' 'Brahman,' or the 'Way' was to live a compassionate life. Indeed, religion was compassion. Today we often assume that before undertaking a religious lifestyle, we must prove to our own satisfaction that "God" or the "Absolute" exists. This is good scientific practice: first you establish a principle; only then can you apply it. But the Axial sages would say that this was to put the cart before the horse. First you must commit yourself to the ethical life; then disciplined and habitual benevolence, not metaphysical conviction, would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought.
Of course, I don't expect hyper rationalists like PZ Myers and his readers to have much of an appreciation for this distinction.
(Why I'm posting this, I don't know. Probably no one's reading at this point...)
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Jason D Scorse Posted 6:36 am
28 Oct 2006
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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caniscandida Posted 7:31 am
28 Oct 2006
be of good cheer, you are on my short list of Gristmill writers that I always read.
As I wrote a while ago, I am not comfortable with the concept of an "Axial Age." The historical record presents us with too many variations, or inconsistencies.
But Karen Armstrong is right to bring attention to this undeniably interesting phenomenon, that at least in China, India, Israel and Greece (and Iran?; I do not know enough about Zoroaster, or the magi), in around the same few centuries in the first millennium BCE, a few thinkers and writers began to insist that religion and ethics be connected. That connexion is not logical; many of their countrymen resisted it; most Egyptians, and most Romans (and some Roman Catholics!), never accepted it.
In the two traditions that I know best, Israel and Greece, it is interesting that the ethical interests of the "Axial Age" writers were never fully integrated into their respective religions. In Israel, the Prophets were often at first persecuted; their writings were later canonized (the Nevi'im, the second part of the Hebrew Bible), but never accorded the highest authority; the central work of the Rabbis, the Mishnah, the foundation of modern Judaism, emphasizes Torah, the mitzvot, the commandments/good deeds; that tradition does indeed have an ethical component, but also includes a lot of stuff which has nothing to do with ethics, just with accepted practice, the acceptability being founded in what is understood to be God's will. E.g., the unacceptability of eating a cheeseburger or a pepperoni pizza has nothing to do with any ethical consideration.
The Prophets and the Psalms (in the Ketuvim, the Writings, the third part of the Hebrew Bible) were major sources for the authors of the New Testament, and subsequently have remained very important for Christians, much more so than the legalistic material in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (Why certain Christians, like that judge in Alabama, Roy Moore, fetishize the Ten Commandments, is a mystery.) It is fair to say, I think, that Jews have always found this re-interpretation of their Scriptures by Christians puzzling, and annoying.
And it should be remembered that the reason Jews no longer practise animal sacrifice is for no reason founded in ethical high-mindedness. It is only because the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE.
Among the Greeks, the ethicizing critics of the mythological tradition were mostly found among the philosophers. They did not have any influence on cult, apparently. They did indeed interest some poets writing mythological texts (e.g., earlier on, Euripides; later on, Virgil and Ovid; still later, Apuleius). But mythological literature was by then no longer driving cult.
I like Karen Armstrong a great deal. I would love to meet her. But when we recommend her books, we must be sure to state the caution that she does not write as a non-committal professional historian. She writes prescriptively, and her historical references are often correspondingly biased.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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jjwfmme Posted 8:06 am
30 Oct 2006
Rites and rituals are no longer enough, they said in effect. You must watch how you behave toward your fellows, for human discord can reduce life to shambles. Interpersonal relations are not the sum of religion, but religion is stopped in its tracks if it skirts them. Yogas (spiritual techniques) must be prefaced by yamas (moral precepts), dhyana (meditation) and prajna (wisdom) by sila (ethical observances). "If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5: 23-24)...
Hence the Golden Rules of the great religions: Christianity's "Do unto others...", Judaism's "what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice, love mercy...", [etc.]
I notice in this passage and its context (sorry, can't link to it), Smith does not mention the Greeks. Maybe the Greeks are a special case. It's also worth noting that Smith and Karen Armstrong have different takes on what brought on the axial age. Smith proposes that it has to do with people encountering people outside their family groups more frequently. Armstrong thinks it has to do with the populace growing weary with the introduction of warrior culture and violence brought on by the introduction of chariots and improved weapons. But these don't seem like they'd have to be mutually exclusive.
Jason-- My point is that not all of them so aggressively push their absolute truths like the religious right does. And I should think we'd want to avoid our own absolutes. If we can show some sort of sympathetic reading of what they're traditions are supposed to be, then I would think that would strengthen our position. It would show that we're the adults in the debate--as opposed to a stance of categoric rejection, a closed-minded, uninformed stance like Dawkins', which I think is a weak position. It just polarizes and creates more determined adversaries. (I think E. O. Wilson has learned something about this, judging from his most recent book...)
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bookerly Posted 6:17 pm
30 Oct 2006
Dear JJWFmme, there are some readers here, even if we don't post. Thanks for the quotes and information!!
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 7:04 pm
30 Oct 2006
I accept the suggestion that certain analogous political and social developments may have been taking place at least in both Greece and Israel, both very small countries, both linked by common, eastern Mediterranean traditions and customs; and maybe also in the much larger regions of northern India, around the Ganges valley, and of the central river valleys of China. But it seems necessary to resort to mysticism, to assert that any similarity in these various and quite different intellectual and religious developments was anything more than coincidental.
I do not remember using the participle "replaced." I would prefer to say, in Greece and Israel, older traditions, both oral and literary, were preserved but also radically re-interpreted. Still, "replaced" has its place. We know of a vast amount of Archaic and Classical Greek material, including tragedies by the three great tragedians, which was no longer being copied and preserved in the Roman imperial period, presumably because it was no longer of great interest. We know of early Christians who rejected altogether the authority of the Hebrew Bible. We know of Rabbis who were more interested in establishing an oral tradition regarding the mitzvot than in concentrating on the written Torah.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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jjwfmme Posted 10:46 pm
15 Dec 2006
"Hysterical Scientism: The Ecstasy of Richard Dawkins" (Appeared in this month's Harper's)
Marilynne Robinson
http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20
Alternet ...
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jjwfmme Posted 10:48 pm
15 Dec 2006
I was going to say Alternet has something up too.
"An Atheist Bullies the Faithful"
Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins reveals his fundamentalist approach to atheisim in his new documentary, The Root of All Evil.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
http://www.alternet.org/movies/45388/
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