Vol. 1 No. 15 - November 13, 2006
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Publisher's Note
I was engaged this week in email debates on several fronts following my castigation of the By reviewers mentioned here in the previous issue – Gerrit Brand (Belydende ateïsme op sy beste) and Johannes de Villiers (Dawkins, hou jou by jou lees).
In the latest By, contributor Charles Wallace, writing from England, speaks to the discomfort of theologians and believers when confronted with the clarion thinking of leading scientists and philosophers and researchers – people such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Science, writes Wallace, is loosing patience with religion’s disputable claims served up as fact. And certainly leading thinkers are increasingly appalled by the apparent protection religion enjoys – demands even! – when pronouncing on current issues with reference to myth, oracles and ancient rites and writs. Particularly disquieting is the dreadful theology that is served up to the faithful in a desperate attempt to conserve a fundamentalist approach to, among others, homosexuality, protection against HIV infection, and even the future of nations in the Middle East!
My sparring partners demanded a more “reasonable” (read “tolerant”, and read also, again, TART Remarks of August 21 – Tolerance… intolerance: How much? How long?) approach from me. (I stated that religion, albeit a fact of life, is bunk, and that “god”, real as it may seem to the great unwashed, is, in the very words of one of the reviewed authors, a “delusion” – a dangerous delusion, I added. As I am also arguing in the leading article this week: Why fight religion?)
I challenged the correspondent, “Shall we, in the name of reasonableness, also consider a flat earth (as opposed to, well, a more rounded vision), phrenology (as opposed to neurology), chemistry (as opposed to alchemy), astrology (as opposed to astronomy), magic and miracles (as opposed to natural laws), and, all ye gods forbid, “Intelligent Design” (as opposed to Natural Selection)?”
“Yes!”, came the reply.
“In principle”, was the reply qualified.
In reasonableness, this particular correspondent did reject Intelligent Design as a feasible option… yet allowed for the “fact” that debunked ID was no reason to accept that there was not “in fact” an “Intelligent Designer” after all.
Ya, well, no, fine.
I rest my case.
Publisher’s note
Editor’s note
Why fight religion?
Democrats win bigger share of religious vote
For Georgetown 'Apostles,' A Rowhouse Rebellion
In one week: counsel, soaring hope, war protest
Six impossible things before breakfast: the evolutionary origins of belief
The sound of thorns crackling in a fire
Click here to order a free copy of Tart Remarks, Vol. 1 No. 15 – November 13, 2006
Publisher's Note
I was engaged this week in email debates on several fronts following my castigation of the By reviewers mentioned here in the previous issue – Gerrit Brand (Belydende ateïsme op sy beste) and Johannes de Villiers (Dawkins, hou jou by jou lees).
In the latest By, contributor Charles Wallace, writing from England, speaks to the discomfort of theologians and believers when confronted with the clarion thinking of leading scientists and philosophers and researchers – people such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Science, writes Wallace, is loosing patience with religion’s disputable claims served up as fact. And certainly leading thinkers are increasingly appalled by the apparent protection religion enjoys – demands even! – when pronouncing on current issues with reference to myth, oracles and ancient rites and writs. Particularly disquieting is the dreadful theology that is served up to the faithful in a desperate attempt to conserve a fundamentalist approach to, among others, homosexuality, protection against HIV infection, and even the future of nations in the Middle East!
My sparring partners demanded a more “reasonable” (read “tolerant”, and read also, again, TART Remarks of August 21 – Tolerance… intolerance: How much? How long?) approach from me. (I stated that religion, albeit a fact of life, is bunk, and that “god”, real as it may seem to the great unwashed, is, in the very words of one of the reviewed authors, a “delusion” – a dangerous delusion, I added. As I am also arguing in the leading article this week: Why fight religion?)
I challenged the correspondent, “Shall we, in the name of reasonableness, also consider a flat earth (as opposed to, well, a more rounded vision), phrenology (as opposed to neurology), chemistry (as opposed to alchemy), astrology (as opposed to astronomy), magic and miracles (as opposed to natural laws), and, all ye gods forbid, “Intelligent Design” (as opposed to Natural Selection)?”
“Yes!”, came the reply.
“In principle”, was the reply qualified.
In reasonableness, this particular correspondent did reject Intelligent Design as a feasible option… yet allowed for the “fact” that debunked ID was no reason to accept that there was not “in fact” an “Intelligent Designer” after all.
Ya, well, no, fine.
I rest my case.
Publisher’s note
Editor’s note
Why fight religion?
Democrats win bigger share of religious vote
For Georgetown 'Apostles,' A Rowhouse Rebellion
In one week: counsel, soaring hope, war protest
Six impossible things before breakfast: the evolutionary origins of belief
The sound of thorns crackling in a fire
Click here to order a free copy of Tart Remarks, Vol. 1 No. 15 – November 13, 2006
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