Letters to the Editor
jebldmm
Published Letters: 933 Editor's Choice: 164
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What if the tradition were shackles?
[Read the article: Revisiting the veil]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Imagine that a nation has a tradition that married women wear delicate shackles around their wrists and ankles. The shackles would restrict by not stop movement, and would be required by custom, not law. Women would wear them voluntarily. I have to admit that I'm not the originator of this idea - It's from a series of SF books I read years ago (Bradely, Darkover). Would we be debating if women should be allowed to wear shackles when moving about in polite society? Or would we be shocked, and insist that this practice (which has no more base in the Koran than wearing a Veil) be stopped?
The term "veil" is very innocuous, but a full veil is no less limiting than shackles. Only a woman's eyes are visible, and in the most limiting versions even that opening is covered by mesh. It's one thing to wear a head covering and loose clothing - women and men of many religions and societies have that tradition. Loose clothing and head coverings don't limit movement or communication. We are talking about covering a woman's face completely. This shuts her off from the world. It makes her a generic human being, and denies people the ability to fully interact with her. It makes her less than a full person. A burqa is no less limiting than shackles. Let's treat it that way. Saying it's okay because women voluntarily accept it is no more valid than saying that slavery was a good idea because most slaves didn't run away.
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Primacy of Perspective without Proof of Preeminence.
[Read the article: The flying spaghetti monster]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My wife is an agnostic scientist (Botanist) who once explained to me (a theistic technologist) that she couldn't possibly be an atheist because to do so would betray the purer faith of science. She insists upon verifiable and reproducible proof from personal observation, or relevant experts in various fields before she will accept any given hypothesis as a theory or truth. I delight in all of the scientific revelations to which she has exposed me over the course of our relationship and have come to understand that evolution is not the same as adaptation as I once thought it was. On the other side of the coin, I can't come up with one single piece of scientific evidence for my belief in a loving God who gives me the choice to do as I please and who loves all of His (or Her or It's) children equally.
As of this date, neither my wife nor I are willing to tear down the other's perspective to accommodate the primacy of our own particular truth and denigrate the other's search for truth. I suppose that the lack of this kind of inquisitive tolerance coupled with the accompanying dishonesty in Mr. Dawkins proselytizing of atheism leads me to believe that his arrogant subjectivity has no more merit than that of his bogeymen: Those intolerant "religious" evangelicals who claim that their, and only their, paths to enlightenment are the correct ones.
Does that sound intolerant? Good. It is right to be intolerant of intolerance when there is ample proof that it is disingenuously being paraded as an ultimate truth. Mr. Dawkin's belief that, whatever does not fit into his paradigm of atheistic truth must automatically be a falsehood is hypocritical in one who claims science as his personal illuminating force. At this time in human existence, there is no more scientific accuracy in Mr. Dawkins reasoning for the reality of atheism than there is proof of the existence of God in the manipulative ramblings of religious extremists, and it becomes easy enough to see disturbing points of similarity between the two.
As a professional academic, Mr. Dawkins claims to be non-confrontational, but the patois of martial terminology and political rationale that he uses in the interview to justify his hypotheses seems to indicate that a belief in truth is secondary to a belief in his truth instead of someone else's. That is not science. That is religion.
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Why are they not talking about this?
[Read the article: The glass closet]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, there are openly gay congressmen and republican staffers - but the media all collude to keep the secret. Why? Because it isn't relevant? Nonsense - nobody worries about the relevance of the most private details of a heterosexual politician's life. Does he have an ex-wife? An adopted child? Heck - those details don't even have to be related to marriage - his religion, financial matters, employment history, drinking habits, drug use, and medical history are all fair game in the eyes of the media. Why does homosexuality stand out as the one thing that can't be discussed? Is it because the media are buying into the "gay is shameful" myth? Is being gay more of a character flaw than being a habitual drinker? A multiple divorcee? Smoking pot? The Republican party has been actively cultivating anti-gay bigotry in order to win elections. I'm sure that most of the media people who worry about "outing" openly gay political aids/policiticans aren't anti-Gay, they simply recognize that any connection to Gay people is bad for the campaign of any Republican candidate, and they don't want to "bias" the public against the candidate. The irony is that if Republicans didn't constantly feed anti-gay hysteria, it wouldn't matter if they worked closely with gay people. The media are enabling the right to play a sick little game with the anti-gay public where they reinforce their prejudices while secretly supporting the behaviour that they are condemning.