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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Nice interview, and for me personally, a Karen Armstrong presents a very inspiring viewpoint of religion and mysticism. I'm currently reading "The Great Transformation" and it's as fascinating as it is well-written.
As a scientist, though, I have to take issue with this statement by the interviewer:
For the evolutionary biologists, the question is whether there's some natural progression to evolution.
That betrays a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, which is based on the idea that random genetic changes can lead to improved fitness - that is, likelihood of procreation - and that these mutations are inherited by the next generation. There is nothing whatsoever about a "progression" - evolution can just as easily lead to "regression" - loss of features, such as limbs in whales or eyes in cave-dwelling organisims. Evolutionary biology strives to understand the mechanism, but it is universally accepted that the only direction of evolution is in what makes survival more probable.
Since God isn't actually real- as Karen would probably admit if she had to bet her life-savings on it- it's a bit rich to chastise anyone for having an infantile view of a non-existant being.
I read her 'History of God' and she explains pretty well how religion was gradually invented and spread by people to fulfill various human needs. Nowhere did it strike me that she seriously believed in the mythology.
At least Dawkins is an honest atheist, who openly states that religion is all fiction.
Yeah, and let's get this straight- the people who talk to the bearded guy in the sky who presumaby designed and built a 1000 billion planets (but forgot to mention any of them in his textbook) are fulfilling a time-honoured tradition, but the people who hate the idea that others spend their lives in thrall to a dangerous fiction are the crazy ones?
By the way- big bangs and black holes aren't religious- they're empirically testable hypotheses. There's a difference.
From the article: "They [Richard Dawkings and other secular humanists] have as bigoted a view of religion as some religious fundamentalists have of secularism. We have too much dogmatism at the moment. Take Richard Dawkins, for example. He did a couple of religious programs that I was fortunate enough to miss."
Condescend much? I have been fortunate enough to miss a lot of religious bullshit over the years since I embraced my fundamental disbelief in a daddy figure in the clouds. So, if I say that to Karen Armstrong, I have a pathology?
I call bullshit.
The "bigoted...view of religion" of these scientists and secular humanists is based on empirical evidence or the lack thereof, or on sound logical argument. Either of these is more reliable than dressing up the universe in some clothing that suits your need for a parental figure.
BTW... Four pages? Do the Salon editors actually edit? As in, cut? Or do they just let writer blather on and on as long as they wish? A waste of bandwidth, IMO.
I do not usually express myself so angrily but this really got my drawers in a bunch.
Heh.
Have a good week, all.
Sadly, unlike certain others, I lack the ability to know precisely what Miss Armstrong would say if forced to reply to a question, to rearrange her words and then attempt to chastise her for what I've reported that she's said, and the drive to imply that opinions that I dislike because of my narrow mindset are 'dishonest'. It's my great sorrow to confess that when I read this, I took from it the words that were written, rather than merely imposing my own mental template of 'religion' over it and then attacking it. Because of that lack of imagination, I'm simply incapable of displaying the 'cleverness' that some others seem to be capable of by misconstruing what was said just to make it easy to retort to.
I have to agree with Miss Armstrong's point of view on the nature of divinity, the point of the afterlife, the vitriol inherent in secular fundamentalism (don't need to look far to find that, do you?), and pretty much everything else that she said. A wonderful article, all in all, with just the right questions to get some of the most interesting answers on religion that I've read in at least a decade. I'm sure that if I were violently secular, I could probably attack some of the things contained therein and pretend that a lack of acceptance of religion makes me inherently more intelligent than any relgious adherent (a mindset that seems common to fundamentalists of all stripes, and almost invariable horribly, horribly wrong). Really though, I could only do that if I intentionally misunderstood and distorted almost everything that she said first - but that would require a larger ego and a smaller IQ than I have access to. I'll leave that for someone else.
Oops, someone already did.
Do you think it might ever be possible for Salon to publish an article that explores an atheist's way of thinking?
I am running out of patience with this constant requirement that scientists and atheists keep an open mind; the reverse argument is never made, which is simply, "What would be so awful if this was it? If this was life, and if there is no afterlife and no big man in the sky who runs the show, and no guarantee of order and sense and meaning in our lives? Would it change the way you felt about your family, and would the way you behave be any different? Would your values suddenly crumble if there were no promise of reward or punishment in an afterlife?"
No one ever says to these people, "Well yes, that's all lovely, but i'd like to remind you to keep an open mind, that this could all be a lovely story but in the end, just imaginative drivel. It's important to always give rational thought its rightful consideration you know! You wouldn't want to be accused of being narrow-minded, would you?"
Salon, please, grow a back bone---offer an alternative. A piece about what the world might be like if we woke up tomorrow and there were no religions anywhere and we could all deal with our own mortality without going to pieces.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
