On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 7:45 AM, William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> http://tinyurl.com/3nv68p > > "Prof Daniel Dennett and Lord Winston present their arguments ahead of > tonight's public debate > Daniel Dennett and Robert Winston > Tuesday April 22, 2008 > Guardian > > Yes, says Prof Daniel Dennett > If religion isn't the greatest threat to rationality and scientific > progress, what is? Perhaps alcohol, or television, or addictive video > games. But although each of these scourges - mixed blessings, in fact > - has the power to overwhelm our best judgment and cloud our critical > faculties, religion has a feature of that none of them can boast: it > doesn't just disable, it honours the disability. It seems increasingly clear to me that in the name of criticizing religion, people who offer these sorts of charges are actually criticizing self-righteousness, which most is neither pervasive within religion nor limited to the religious. Otherwise, they would have to account for religious that successfully teach and encourage humility, grace, forgiveness, critical thinking and so forth... and they would have to explain what is different about the non-religious occurrences of the "religious" weaknesses they describe. Yes, critical thinking. I live a few blocks from one of the top ten law schools in the U.S. Like many other top-tier schools in the world, which turn out some of our finest leaders, it is run by Jesuits. As David Brin observed in "The Transparent Society," research has shown that self-righteous people are high on endorphins. It is another addiction. The failure of the Dennetts of this world is to recognize that the behaviors they despise are neither present throughout or limited to religion. They take advantage of the murkiness of the definition of "religion" to hammer away at anything that looks like the nail they've chosen. Invective against ritual is dangerous stuff, in my opinion. Although I have no objection to evolutionary and biological explanations for why we seem to need ritual, there is little doubt in my mind that it is a deep human need the modern world increasingly devalues. Why funerals? Why weddings? Why Monday Night Football? Why all the large and small rituals? Religion, in particular, is a means to deal with our sense of helplessness in the face of traumas large and small by helping people to accept things as they are... yet it is so tempting to to make the tiny twist that creates the illusion that we have power over things beyond our control. And yes, perhaps to imagine a being who has ultimate control, tossing aside the free will that virtually every religion acknowledges. What are bright people like Dennett missing when they focus on religion instead of the real issue? How about the very real damage being done to science by politics? I suppose the response will be that religion lies behind it... but it will be hard to convince me that something more closely associated with evil lurks there -- the love of money and the self-righteousness of those who have it in large quantities. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
