Marcus -
Very thoughtful summary and analysis. I *am* hopeful that the
intelligentsia of the world (of the West?) can somehow reason their way
through the world's problems to some solutions. We here
(FRAIM-at-large) might be in some way a microcosm of that.
My snide remark in response to Roger's (also thoughtful and insightful)
analysis of the Dawkins/Hitchens/et alia thingy was in reaction to my
fear that (as Roger puts it) appearing to "all be reasonable men" in
fact they might actually be as fervently unthinking as those they are
trying to "fix".
One theme of my chiding here (usually of Doug) revolves around a form of
hypocrisy that I, at least, find somewhere between difficult and
impossible to avoid. The epitome of this is "intolerance of
intolerance". It seems to be an example of Godel's Incompleteness. If
there any intuitively obvious allowance for intolerance it would seem to
be intolerance *of* intolerance, yet opening that door risks scope creep
on our subjects of intolerance.
The Irony of Hitchens and company declaring Jihad on Islam itself was
too rich to skip over. I find your (Marcus') analysis here an antidote
to my knee-jerk reasoning on the topic. Thanks for talking me off that
ledge (if only incidentally).
- Steve
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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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
