On 9/26/2012 7:02 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
But start at 1:54:00 and listen to the last three minutes and fourteen
seconds, and give me your interpretation.
Around 1:47:30 Dawkins makes remark about finding out the "fact of the
matter". And how "passionate" he was about it. This leads to
Hitchens asserting that all religions are equally wrong, and that the
menace of religion coming from the "surrender of the mind"
I think an unstated psychological distinction is between `getting to
truth Z' vs. `denying yourself truths A-Y'. To see anything like the
truth in the natural world one must attempt to mask every bias and only
to realize the truth will still be, even after extensive falsification,
ambiguous. Having nothing nailed down is just more difficult and
stressful. (Constrained views of the world apparently do make people
happy -- http://pewresearch.org/assets/social/pdf/AreWeHappyYet.pdf .)
But having the drive to some arbitrary Z has a psychological property
seen in religion: belief without evidence. In this view, the surrender
of the mind is also a sort of character weakness. Meanwhile, scientific
culture even advocates pigheaded sloppiness known as the hypothesis.
Hitchens goes on to talk about the distinction of offending one Muslim
vs. a billion of them -- or rather why anyone would see the former as
equivalent to the latter. It would be weakness to decide the merit of
an idea based on the implied threats of an unthinking group; it's
important to be prepared to go it alone. Just to prove he means it, he
takes shots at more religions. (Mostly for dramatic effect, I'd say,
but fair enough anyway.)
Toward the end, what I think he's worrying about is the possibility that
the greater (world) population just can't do without having some stupid
fairy tale to stick to (and especially to stick to each other). Since
he equates religious thinking to disease contagion, he clearly envisions
a future where the fervent outnumber the sober. He only suggests one
scenario, though. Part of what makes the U.S. government act is
defense of secularism, the Constitution, and all that. Another part is
that unleashed fervor is bad for business -- like when it involves
valuable natural resources. Hitchens mentions the U.S. military as a
likely appeal, but not other powerful secular actors of Asia that have
their own interests to protect, and could be pretty nasty about it if
they were so inclined. "Recess is over -- now put down that book of
holy words and get your lazy *ss down to the factory, would you?" (I
just knew globalization must have some benefit!)
Marcus
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