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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
When I was a kid, I used to think that the world was on a fast track to progress; that increased access to knowledge and non-local points of view would cause people to shed their poorly informed misconceptions. Now I know many well educated well traveled people who still cling to their ineffable spirituality. Granted, I don't personally know anyone of the abject fundamentalist persuasion, so perhaps there has been progress, but not so much as I expected. I'm baffled.
The thing that struck me most, as a child, was that Christian parents never had Muslim kids. Everyone talks up the "personal" nature of their beliefs, but somehow, they almost all invariably believe almost exactly the same thing as the people living next door. One can take great comfort in having one's personal conclusions affirmed by so many friends and neighbors, I suppose. It's just like the scientific method, isn't it? You form a hypothesis, and then when the independent inquiries of your family reach the same conclusion, you have a theory as strongly grounded as any scientific proposition. Well, minus the observable measurable evidence bit, but that's just a nit.
I find people's failure to recognize the overt influence of culture on their beliefs deeply disturbing. Religion is a polite word for xenophobia.
You know what's odd, though. I know a lot of folks who'd religiosity IQ isn't so high who I'd much rather spend time with than some of their nihilistic genius counterparts who lack social grace or empathy. That's the nut that's tough to crack: sans religion, how should we live? Dostoyevsky took a swipe at it (and decided religion wasn't so bad after all). Sagan was trying to work up to something. I've never yet found an insightful secular position on the subject.
Will Bill convert anyone? I hope so, but probably his movie will mostly piss a bunch of people off. That's good too. But what I'd really like to see is a really strong argument about human behavior that wasn't grounded in superstition.
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
