Nick Arnett wrote:
>I wish I could reply to some of the other new messages in this thread, but
>time is short for me today and Kat's message was striking, with its
>connections between religion and what we're talking about. That's not
>surprising in the sense that I have been considering these issues from an
>explicitly Christian standpoint, but I was surprised by how I had failed to
>see things quite as clearly as Kat stated them.
Whee, the flattery is bad for my soul. <grin> More seriously, I'm taking
a course on Environmental Ethics at the moment; when one has this sort of
stuff as a job of sorts, more time is spent playing with ideas.
(And when one is actually *looking forward* to writing an essay for a
class, one needs to get one's head examined.)
>To return to Kat's observation of the connection between the failings of
>modern systems and the rise of religious thinking, I'd like to add that
>there's no coincidence. When rational systems fails to produce the expected
>result, people naturally choose to depend less on logic. And sometimes they
>turn too far, becoming fundamentalist extremists in the religiosity of
>Christianity, environmentalism or whatever. (And that stuff sells, so we
>see it exaggerated in the media.)
<snip>
>So, while religious thinking may be scary when it rejects logic, I'll argue
>that it can achieve wonderful things when it rebels against tyranny and
>embraces the shortcomings of human logic, in faith that we can continue to
>do better and better.
You said this much better than me- thanks.
Essentially what I was trying to say was that I think we are coming to
the end of the "rational" age, and I use the smear quotes because I
wonder if it was ever really rational. Many people, including some
scientists, have a childlike faith in technology and science that only
the fiercest of fundimentalists can rival.
*However*, before I get my monitor fried here, there are plenty of
wonderful things that have come out of the rational age. Technology is
nice stuff. Without it I'd be half-dead from cow milking and looking
forward to my own death in childbirth, and as for computers, well,
obviously I'm a convert. But the belief that rationalism and technology
can solve every problem is dying a natural death, as is the belief that
capitalism creates its own morality, and people are looking somewhere
else for to put their faith and draw their belief.
My hope is that we can combine the best aspects of the two- the
hardheaded practicality and skepticism of the scientific age and the
genuine belief in something greater than ourselves to be served of the
religious one- and create, if not a perfect society, than at least the
next step upwards to a *good* one. Looking back is all very well but
there are plenty of people who've died going, "well, at least I was
better than *that* guy," and personally I don't want to go that way.
My fear is that we'll end up in an environmentalist version of the
Inquisition, in which case y'all watch for me waving from the stake.
Kat Feete
-------------
"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them
something to aim at."
Terry Pratchett
