Wednesday, January 25, 2006

still reading, and re-reading End O' Faith

I have finished with a chapter on Islam and feel I must re-read it to make sure what he's saying- not that he's being unclear (summary: Islam is very bad and means to kill us all and probably themselves, too, iin the name of Paradise and Allah), but that I want to understand the context of his Quran quotes as much as possible and need to seriously evaluate some of the conclusions he drawn from his argument before i commit them to print here.

In other reading news- Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World is spectacular. It's an oldie, but very worthwhile. His arguments for the importance of a true and solid knowledge of history are cogent and well-written. More in depth later.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

End of Faith pt 2

Now, at approximately page 102, we have delved into the history of the Inquisition, complete with scriptural and liturgical references for why it is all right in the eyes of the church (Catholic and Lutheran, actually)- we have touched on anti-semitism and are just going into world war two.

One of the things which Harris points out is that there were a few people in charge at the time who took a step back and tried to moderate what was happening. It didn'’t work so well generally.

Another, and more important thing he points out is that, once the idea of witchcraft was floated, rational- within the bounds of of the assumption of witches existing - evidence against the accused was sought. (What constituted rational evidence was pretty flimsy, let's face facts, and often elicited by torture- something which we would do well to remember is not the most reliable source for information.)

While his arguments and examples are well-put-together, there are a few things which stick out.

On page 75, he points out that "“Karl Popper has told us that we never prove a theory right; we merely fail to prove it wrong." This is just not so, as we can easily see in the use of germ theory, to name just one area. Karl Popper- at the severe risk of diversion- I would like to direct you to this good explanation of post-modernist thought and its incompatability with historical accuracy http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/le12-a30.shtml. The very idea that we can never know the truth (or, Truth) is one which has stymied scientific research, and opens the door for exactly the kind of muddied thinking which Harris is lobbying against in his decrying of religion. There is such a thing as Objective Truth on Earth, and *this* is what we need to concentrate on when dealing with religious issues in the public sphere.

Harris points out that "“all spheres of discourse are not on the same footing, for the simple reason that not all spheres of discourse seek the same footing (or any footing whatsoever). Science is science because it represents our most committed effort to verify that our statements about the world are true (or at least not false)." I agree here not just with the form, but the content.

On page 79, he says: "“Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao: although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality, communism was little more than a political religion."”

I am not about to defend Stalin nor Mao. What I am about to do is to point out that, like rationality, communism was another idea to which lip service was paid by these two. Both were responsible for the deaths stated, but what is unstated is that neither were actual communists- they were nationalists and tyrants. They were not the natural outcome of the revolutions in which they took part.

After Lenin'’s death, Stalin had his agents hunt down and arrest (for show trials) or kill the Russian Bolshevik leadership (including Trotsky, who was the political heir-apparent to Lenin), and he ordered Mao to submit to the KuoMinTang, thereby assuring the murder of thousands of (actual)communists. What you had under Stalin was a travesty, to be sure, comprised not only of the cult of personality but also the betrayal of the workers'’ revolution of October 1917. His insistance on utter loyalty without question (and his paranoia-inspiring secret police) surely does recall a religious-type hysteria. The religion here was not communism, though, but Stalinism. Pretty much the same thing could be said of Maoism. They also took the liberty to re-write the gospels- in the form of the history books- and to leave out or demonise those who met with disaproval.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Review of a review

Well I was reading the Weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal (know thy class enemy and all that) and there was this review of Green Eggs and Ham (no, really) in which the author puts forth that it is a lesson in salesmanship, and so very American. I was alarmed and almost spilled my coffee in sitting up fast and saying "What the--?!?" Everyone knows it's a lesson in trying new things. It peeved me.

He also (the review author) mentioned open-mindedness as being an American Value. Now, I know many open-minded Americans, but have to say that, comming from the WSJ, it did elicit a snortle, given their frequent appeal to closed-mindedness in their news coverage.

Anyhoo- it was a short review and I finished it. Back to the books...

Friday, January 13, 2006

End of Faith- Harris. Just out in paperback


I'm in the first third of the book- about page 60 or so. Please take that into consideration.

There are a couple of....possibly worrisome ideas he comes up with- Ok, *actually worrisome*- at one point he says (rightly) that there is no talking to some people. No kidding, eh? But where he goes with it is the worrisome part-it might be necessary to continue the war against al quaida and keep killing them because they are untalk-to-ables!! Overall he presents a good case that there is a direct link between belief and action- but he seems (again, I'm only at 60 or so, so this could change) to put forth a fair number of assumptions about there only being one possible course of action connected to any given belief. I disagree.

Obviously, Al Qaida presents a special problem, but just commiting ourself to killing them all- if that's even possible, which I rather doubt, given its ever-growing nature- is as mad as he claims the religion backing Al Qaida operatives when they blow themselves (and others) up to be. One would rather hope that in his (Harris') quest to bring about a state of 'reason', reasonableness would be a a hallmark of his arguments. Instead, so far, he presents a number of pugnacious and dogmatic arguments. Granted these come primarily in the form of Al Qaida condemnations, (and I mean, their methods are madness indeed, so they do rather bring this upon themselves), but my hope is that he will present more reasoned arguments against faith as a means to action.

One thing which I do agree with is his position that faith will lead directly to action- ie, if you think that you will find 70 virgins after martyring yourself, you're more likely to do so than if you believed that life on this earth at this time is all there is. He deals mostly wth "religious extremeists" when presenting examples, but he also takes religious moderates to task for preaching tolerance for all kinds of beliefs, when - as he does show- and not just with Islamic examples (though 9/11 is foremost on his mind at this point, and so it follows that Islam is as well, though I am about to start a chapter on the Holocaust, wherein, he says, he will prove that the Nazis were, whether they realised it or not at the time, engaged in a religious war. I'll get to that when I get to it, though, right?) that tolerance for untenable things like killing women who show their hair, or waging war on your neighbor *just because* they are Jewish, Christian or whathave should not be tolerated. He also deplores the moderates of any religion in that they are diluting their own texts to bring their beliefs more into line with modern times- which he says only serves to rile the more fundamentalist elements. His claim that this "updating" serves neither reason nor faith well. I am inclined to agree with that view.

Along the way he makes pleas for more proof-based thought. Again, I am inclined to go with this.

That's what I have so far, I'm sort of in the middle of it....more later.