"TOR" <temple_of_reason@yahoo.co.uk>
2005-06-10 04:03:44 UTC
So far as I understand this article below is a re-post of Mr. Rushdie's and
though he has gained some prominence and I defended him against censorship I
am inclined to seriously discount his article below as it flawed and as
usual perhaps insensitive (though artistically he can do so in bad taste as
he likes hopefully in serious thought he can exercise more discretion).
Where he states "Evans' "Atheism Lite," which seeks to negotiate a truce
between religious and irreligious world views, is easily demolished. " he
also states no foundation for such unsupported conjecture as he presents.
If one can seriously start at the beginning by asking for detailed
specifications as to what exactly is meant by the term "old-time atheism" I
do so though I doubt such a thing actually exists, and I suggest the phrase
was coined not to document such a phenomenon but to arbitrarily market what
has been with us all a long by other labels.
It was stated:
1. "religions continue to attack their own artists: Hindu artists' paintings
are attacked by Hindu mobs, Sikh playwrights are threatened by Sikh violence
and Muslim novelists and filmmakers are menaced by Islamic fanatics"
TRUE AND I STRONGLY SUPPORT PHYSICAL AND IF NECESSARY AN ARMED DEFENCE SO
THAT SUCH FANATICS BE DEALT WITH DECISIVELY as they threaten the fabric of
society, government, and world peace.
2. "If religion were a private matter, one could more easily respect its
believers' right to seek its comforts and nourishments."
I AM UNSURE I FEEL OBLIGATED ON ISSUES OF THEIR DELUSIONS
3. "religion today is big public business, using efficient political
organization and cutting-edge information technology to advance its ends.
Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove
treatment in return."
TRUE AND I HAVE NO OBJECTION TO DEAL IN KIND WITH SUCH UNPRINCIPLED
CAPITALIST ENTERPRISES
4. The old Greek religion lives on as mythology, the old Norse religion has
left us the Norse myths and, yes, now we can read them as literature. The
Bible contains much great literature, too, but the literalist voices of
Christianity grow ever louder, and one doubts that they would welcome Evans'
child's storybook approach.
TRUE THEY WON'T
GENERALLY as one can see at time I take an even more extreme view than Mr.
Rushdie.
NONE THE LESS balanced minds must take notice of the rules in such matters
and exception where those such as I have been attacked as if we were rabid
fundies and not seen as supporting LIFE LONG the theories of Evolution and
struggling against the fundie ignorance. Perhaps we can chalk if all up to
such attacks occurring online but I think not as Atheists too have made a
business from marketing their wares and it is the obligation of the so
called intellects of Atheism to respond accordingly in a well thought out
balance ethical principled manner or in essence abdicate their positions.
I challenged both the communities by my posting of articles online asking
"Is God the Big Bang" the inverse title would could also be used "Is the Big
Bang God", and a Gandhi also wrote "My God is Truth" I was ignored and not
appropriately considered.
So now I have less sympathy when perhaps I should exercise more patience for
I suppose I have always as anyone been some sort of fool, but I must ask
then still what kind of fool a correct one or incorrect one.
I don't wish to say that Mr Rushdie in essence has abdicated his position to
speak on the matter as he is a well known literary writer but in matters
such as these perhaps the world maybe better off without his involvement in
such matters
Mr. Rushdie makes reference to Agnostic forms of Deism
"Dawkins showed in The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution
Reveals a Universe Without Design"
After which we must ask then why bother if there is no point on which to
focus either Theist or Atheist.
Mr. Rushdie continues saying:
"Evans' position fits well with that of the American philosopher of science
Michael Ruse, whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, lays much of
the blame for the growth of creationism in America - and for the
increasingly strident attempts by the religious right to have evolutionary
theory kicked off the curriculum and replaced by the new dogma of
"intelligent design" - at the door of the scientists who have tried to
compete with, and even supplant, religion. "
To which I only partially agree as it is not a question of some "scientists"
but stipulate I noticed a rise in fundie activity as a political force
during the Viet Nam War by reactionary elements in the US (and else where)
focusing their political basis to supplant the progressive movement then
involved with the Black CHURCH and Liberal Churchs in sharp contentious
political struggle with forces of reaction so as to impede the conscious
development of the masses.
Though I have not seen studies as to any rise in prescriptionist terminology
and methodology since the advent of the internet, I take notice that such
correlation has seemingly some basis as the internet has become the newest
latest focus of the right as another form of media to be controled, and as
the PC is the tool of choice now common with all middle class, professional,
business, military and academic classes when I began my involvement in 1998
it was mostly the Engineering segments of society.
star <***@yahoo.com> wrote:
May 23, 2005.
Just give me that old-time atheism!
"Not believing in God is no excuse for being virulently anti-religious or
naïvely pro-science," says Dylan Evans, a professor of robotics at the
University of West England in Bristol.
Evans has written an article for the Guardian of London deriding the
old-fashioned, "19th-century" atheism of such prominent thinkers as Richard
Dawkins and Jonathan Miller, instead proposing a new, modern atheism which
"values religion, treats science as simply a means to an end and finds the
meaning of life in art."
Indeed, he says, religion itself is to be understood as "a kind of art,
which only a child could mistake for reality and which only a child would
reject for being false."
Evans' position fits well with that of the American philosopher of science
Michael Ruse, whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, lays much of
the blame for the growth of creationism in America - and for the
increasingly strident attempts by the religious right to have evolutionary
theory kicked off the curriculum and replaced by the new dogma of
"intelligent design" - at the door of the scientists who have tried to
compete with, and even supplant, religion.
A staunch evolutionist himself, he is nevertheless highly critical of such
modern giants as Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson.
Evans' "Atheism Lite," which seeks to negotiate a truce between religious
and irreligious world views, is easily demolished.
Such a truce would have a chance of working only if it were reciprocal - if
the world's religions agreed to value the atheist position and to concede
its ethical basis, if they respected the discoveries and achievements of
modern science, even when these discoveries challenge religious sanctities,
and if they agreed that art at its best reveals life's multiple meanings at
least as clearly as so-called "revealed" texts.
No such reciprocal arrangement exists, however, nor is there the slightest
chance that such an accommodation could ever be reached.
It is among the truths believed to be self-evident by the followers of all
religions that godlessness is equivalent to amorality and that ethics
requires the underpinning presence of some sort of ultimate arbiter, some
sort of supernatural absolute, without which secularism, humanism,
relativism, hedonism, liberalism and all manner of permissive improprieties
will inevitably seduce the unbeliever down immoral ways.
To those of us who are perfectly prepared to indulge in the above vices but
still believe ourselves to be ethical beings, the
godlessness-equals-morality position is pretty hard to swallow.
Nor does the current behaviour of organized religion breed confidence in the
Evans/Ruse laissez-faire attitude. Education everywhere is seriously
imperilled by religious attacks.
In recent years, Hindu nationalists in India attempted to rewrite the
nation's history books to support their anti-Muslim ideology, an effort
thwarted only by the electoral victory of a secularist coalition led by the
Congress party.
Meanwhile, Muslim voices the world over are claiming that evolutionary
theory is incompatible with Islam.
And in America, the battle over the teaching of intelligent design in U.S.
schools is reaching crunch time, as the American Civil Liberties Union
prepares to take on intelligent-design proponents in a Pennsylvania court.
It seems inconceivable that better behaviour on the part of the world's
great scientists, of the sort that Ruse would prefer, would persuade these
forces to back down.
Intelligent design, an idea designed backward so as to force the antique
idea of a Creator upon the beauty of creation, is so thoroughly rooted in
pseudoscience, so full of false logic, so easy to attack that a little
rudeness seems called for.
Its advocates argue, for example, that the sheer complexity and perfection
of cellular/molecular structures is inexplicable by gradual evolution.
However, the multiple parts of complex, interlocking biological systems do
evolve together, gradually expanding and adapting - and, as Dawkins showed
in The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe
Without Design, natural selection is active at every step of this process.
But, as well as scientific arguments, there are others that are more, well,
novelistic. What about bad design, for example? Was it really so intelligent
to come up with the birth canal or the prostate gland?
Then, there's the moral argument against an intelligent designer who cursed
his creations with cancer and AIDS. Is the intelligent designer also
amorally cruel?
To see religion as "a kind of art," as Evans rather sweetly proposes, is
possible only when the religion is dead or when, like the Church of England,
it has become a set of polite rituals.
The old Greek religion lives on as mythology, the old Norse religion has
left us the Norse myths and, yes, now we can read them as literature.
The Bible contains much great literature, too, but the literalist voices of
Christianity grow ever louder, and one doubts that they would welcome Evans'
child's storybook approach.
Meanwhile religions continue to attack their own artists: Hindu artists'
paintings are attacked by Hindu mobs, Sikh playwrights are threatened by
Sikh violence and Muslim novelists and filmmakers are menaced by Islamic
fanatics with a vigorous unawareness of any kinship.
If religion were a private matter, one could more easily respect its
believers' right to seek its comforts and nourishments.
But religion today is big public business, using efficient political
organization and cutting-edge information technology to advance its ends.
Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove
treatment in return.
As Evans and Ruse would do well to recognize, atheists such as Dawkins,
Miller and Wilson are neither immature nor culpable for taking on such
religionists.
They are doing a vital and necessary thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salman Rushdie is the author of The Satanic Verses, Fury and many other
books.
Salman Rushdie
~A~
universal copyright (c) 2004 Andreas Zito all rights reserved
Andrew Zito Super Universal Living Arts Chaos Centre
http://uk.geocities.com/andrew_zito
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/AZSULA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/temple_of_reason
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/A-Z-SULA
P.O.Box 1615 Altoona PA 16603 USA
Faith in the Essence of all that which is True, Good, and Living thru
Reason, Material Existence, and Good Works - Gens Una Sumas.
though he has gained some prominence and I defended him against censorship I
am inclined to seriously discount his article below as it flawed and as
usual perhaps insensitive (though artistically he can do so in bad taste as
he likes hopefully in serious thought he can exercise more discretion).
Where he states "Evans' "Atheism Lite," which seeks to negotiate a truce
between religious and irreligious world views, is easily demolished. " he
also states no foundation for such unsupported conjecture as he presents.
If one can seriously start at the beginning by asking for detailed
specifications as to what exactly is meant by the term "old-time atheism" I
do so though I doubt such a thing actually exists, and I suggest the phrase
was coined not to document such a phenomenon but to arbitrarily market what
has been with us all a long by other labels.
It was stated:
1. "religions continue to attack their own artists: Hindu artists' paintings
are attacked by Hindu mobs, Sikh playwrights are threatened by Sikh violence
and Muslim novelists and filmmakers are menaced by Islamic fanatics"
TRUE AND I STRONGLY SUPPORT PHYSICAL AND IF NECESSARY AN ARMED DEFENCE SO
THAT SUCH FANATICS BE DEALT WITH DECISIVELY as they threaten the fabric of
society, government, and world peace.
2. "If religion were a private matter, one could more easily respect its
believers' right to seek its comforts and nourishments."
I AM UNSURE I FEEL OBLIGATED ON ISSUES OF THEIR DELUSIONS
3. "religion today is big public business, using efficient political
organization and cutting-edge information technology to advance its ends.
Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove
treatment in return."
TRUE AND I HAVE NO OBJECTION TO DEAL IN KIND WITH SUCH UNPRINCIPLED
CAPITALIST ENTERPRISES
4. The old Greek religion lives on as mythology, the old Norse religion has
left us the Norse myths and, yes, now we can read them as literature. The
Bible contains much great literature, too, but the literalist voices of
Christianity grow ever louder, and one doubts that they would welcome Evans'
child's storybook approach.
TRUE THEY WON'T
GENERALLY as one can see at time I take an even more extreme view than Mr.
Rushdie.
NONE THE LESS balanced minds must take notice of the rules in such matters
and exception where those such as I have been attacked as if we were rabid
fundies and not seen as supporting LIFE LONG the theories of Evolution and
struggling against the fundie ignorance. Perhaps we can chalk if all up to
such attacks occurring online but I think not as Atheists too have made a
business from marketing their wares and it is the obligation of the so
called intellects of Atheism to respond accordingly in a well thought out
balance ethical principled manner or in essence abdicate their positions.
I challenged both the communities by my posting of articles online asking
"Is God the Big Bang" the inverse title would could also be used "Is the Big
Bang God", and a Gandhi also wrote "My God is Truth" I was ignored and not
appropriately considered.
So now I have less sympathy when perhaps I should exercise more patience for
I suppose I have always as anyone been some sort of fool, but I must ask
then still what kind of fool a correct one or incorrect one.
I don't wish to say that Mr Rushdie in essence has abdicated his position to
speak on the matter as he is a well known literary writer but in matters
such as these perhaps the world maybe better off without his involvement in
such matters
Mr. Rushdie makes reference to Agnostic forms of Deism
"Dawkins showed in The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution
Reveals a Universe Without Design"
After which we must ask then why bother if there is no point on which to
focus either Theist or Atheist.
Mr. Rushdie continues saying:
"Evans' position fits well with that of the American philosopher of science
Michael Ruse, whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, lays much of
the blame for the growth of creationism in America - and for the
increasingly strident attempts by the religious right to have evolutionary
theory kicked off the curriculum and replaced by the new dogma of
"intelligent design" - at the door of the scientists who have tried to
compete with, and even supplant, religion. "
To which I only partially agree as it is not a question of some "scientists"
but stipulate I noticed a rise in fundie activity as a political force
during the Viet Nam War by reactionary elements in the US (and else where)
focusing their political basis to supplant the progressive movement then
involved with the Black CHURCH and Liberal Churchs in sharp contentious
political struggle with forces of reaction so as to impede the conscious
development of the masses.
Though I have not seen studies as to any rise in prescriptionist terminology
and methodology since the advent of the internet, I take notice that such
correlation has seemingly some basis as the internet has become the newest
latest focus of the right as another form of media to be controled, and as
the PC is the tool of choice now common with all middle class, professional,
business, military and academic classes when I began my involvement in 1998
it was mostly the Engineering segments of society.
star <***@yahoo.com> wrote:
May 23, 2005.
Just give me that old-time atheism!
"Not believing in God is no excuse for being virulently anti-religious or
naïvely pro-science," says Dylan Evans, a professor of robotics at the
University of West England in Bristol.
Evans has written an article for the Guardian of London deriding the
old-fashioned, "19th-century" atheism of such prominent thinkers as Richard
Dawkins and Jonathan Miller, instead proposing a new, modern atheism which
"values religion, treats science as simply a means to an end and finds the
meaning of life in art."
Indeed, he says, religion itself is to be understood as "a kind of art,
which only a child could mistake for reality and which only a child would
reject for being false."
Evans' position fits well with that of the American philosopher of science
Michael Ruse, whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, lays much of
the blame for the growth of creationism in America - and for the
increasingly strident attempts by the religious right to have evolutionary
theory kicked off the curriculum and replaced by the new dogma of
"intelligent design" - at the door of the scientists who have tried to
compete with, and even supplant, religion.
A staunch evolutionist himself, he is nevertheless highly critical of such
modern giants as Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson.
Evans' "Atheism Lite," which seeks to negotiate a truce between religious
and irreligious world views, is easily demolished.
Such a truce would have a chance of working only if it were reciprocal - if
the world's religions agreed to value the atheist position and to concede
its ethical basis, if they respected the discoveries and achievements of
modern science, even when these discoveries challenge religious sanctities,
and if they agreed that art at its best reveals life's multiple meanings at
least as clearly as so-called "revealed" texts.
No such reciprocal arrangement exists, however, nor is there the slightest
chance that such an accommodation could ever be reached.
It is among the truths believed to be self-evident by the followers of all
religions that godlessness is equivalent to amorality and that ethics
requires the underpinning presence of some sort of ultimate arbiter, some
sort of supernatural absolute, without which secularism, humanism,
relativism, hedonism, liberalism and all manner of permissive improprieties
will inevitably seduce the unbeliever down immoral ways.
To those of us who are perfectly prepared to indulge in the above vices but
still believe ourselves to be ethical beings, the
godlessness-equals-morality position is pretty hard to swallow.
Nor does the current behaviour of organized religion breed confidence in the
Evans/Ruse laissez-faire attitude. Education everywhere is seriously
imperilled by religious attacks.
In recent years, Hindu nationalists in India attempted to rewrite the
nation's history books to support their anti-Muslim ideology, an effort
thwarted only by the electoral victory of a secularist coalition led by the
Congress party.
Meanwhile, Muslim voices the world over are claiming that evolutionary
theory is incompatible with Islam.
And in America, the battle over the teaching of intelligent design in U.S.
schools is reaching crunch time, as the American Civil Liberties Union
prepares to take on intelligent-design proponents in a Pennsylvania court.
It seems inconceivable that better behaviour on the part of the world's
great scientists, of the sort that Ruse would prefer, would persuade these
forces to back down.
Intelligent design, an idea designed backward so as to force the antique
idea of a Creator upon the beauty of creation, is so thoroughly rooted in
pseudoscience, so full of false logic, so easy to attack that a little
rudeness seems called for.
Its advocates argue, for example, that the sheer complexity and perfection
of cellular/molecular structures is inexplicable by gradual evolution.
However, the multiple parts of complex, interlocking biological systems do
evolve together, gradually expanding and adapting - and, as Dawkins showed
in The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe
Without Design, natural selection is active at every step of this process.
But, as well as scientific arguments, there are others that are more, well,
novelistic. What about bad design, for example? Was it really so intelligent
to come up with the birth canal or the prostate gland?
Then, there's the moral argument against an intelligent designer who cursed
his creations with cancer and AIDS. Is the intelligent designer also
amorally cruel?
To see religion as "a kind of art," as Evans rather sweetly proposes, is
possible only when the religion is dead or when, like the Church of England,
it has become a set of polite rituals.
The old Greek religion lives on as mythology, the old Norse religion has
left us the Norse myths and, yes, now we can read them as literature.
The Bible contains much great literature, too, but the literalist voices of
Christianity grow ever louder, and one doubts that they would welcome Evans'
child's storybook approach.
Meanwhile religions continue to attack their own artists: Hindu artists'
paintings are attacked by Hindu mobs, Sikh playwrights are threatened by
Sikh violence and Muslim novelists and filmmakers are menaced by Islamic
fanatics with a vigorous unawareness of any kinship.
If religion were a private matter, one could more easily respect its
believers' right to seek its comforts and nourishments.
But religion today is big public business, using efficient political
organization and cutting-edge information technology to advance its ends.
Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove
treatment in return.
As Evans and Ruse would do well to recognize, atheists such as Dawkins,
Miller and Wilson are neither immature nor culpable for taking on such
religionists.
They are doing a vital and necessary thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salman Rushdie is the author of The Satanic Verses, Fury and many other
books.
Salman Rushdie
~A~
universal copyright (c) 2004 Andreas Zito all rights reserved
Andrew Zito Super Universal Living Arts Chaos Centre
http://uk.geocities.com/andrew_zito
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/AZSULA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/temple_of_reason
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/A-Z-SULA
P.O.Box 1615 Altoona PA 16603 USA
Faith in the Essence of all that which is True, Good, and Living thru
Reason, Material Existence, and Good Works - Gens Una Sumas.