oops - drat this laptop! ... was caused over a sandwich. This turned out to be the Balkan assassination story. My view these days is that this war started with the British invasion of Iraq in 1913 and might be better explained from the point where various imperialist navies (British, US, French, German and Japanese) were queuing up in 1906 off the Chinese coast (Boxer rebellion etc.) - such analysis is way beyond school examination 'sound bites'.
What I'd like to see is a much more open society that was no longer printing myths. I want my beliefs and fellowship based in an accurate version of what human life is about and the dangers involved in denying this. I want control to be based in Reason that leaves emotional understanding in. What I find personally is that I repeat the mistakes of any elite thinking or practice in being so frustrated about general ignorance. It's not intellectually honest to believe in the will of the majority, though one can make a lesser claim for a society in which votes matter than perfection. In the past, religion often had emancipatory aims - much of its language is about freedom from debt - and I find myself wishing one could take part in the fellowship of such religion without corrupting into all the sacred text belief in god nonsense - just as I don't mind feeling proud of my country and its people as long as it's not on the basis of jingoism and false history. Much western history is little more than dross versions of stuff peddled by the Vatican. Today's religion is economics based in imperialist myth - we hide a holocaust, indeed deny one - as in the book 'Killing Hope' - though one need not focus on the Americans. I feel the truth of this may be so bad that figures like Churchill, Bush, Blair and others may well have been bag men for international finance and the preservation of an ancien regime. I wish in many ways for a religion that stood up to this. On Oct 4, 4:07 pm, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > The ultimate answer for me is that belief in god lacks intellectual > honesty. I wouldn't seek any argument on the existence of god - for > me an answer either way is a rationalist fantasy - i.e. there is no > answer. I reject most of the ideology I was brought up in as based in > fables. The idea of scripture as revelation from god doesn't appeal > in the slightest. Most of it is wrong and flatly uninteresting - one > would expect any such conversation to reveal what we don't know and be > less obviously made up by human beings. This doesn't make me > unreligious, but does make me consider religion as person-made. > > Much of the non-religious ideology of my youth fails for similar > reasons. I once believed the British Empire was a fine thing and the > world wars were the fault of rotten Germans and Japanese. I now know > this was because more accurate history was denied me. As a kid, I > thought the Opium Wars must have been about our brave Royal Navy > chasing drug dealing Chinamen around, and our empire about bringing > civilisation, fair-play and cricket to the 'undeserving'. I couldn't > understand why Americans had been so dumb as to reject our rule. I > thought our society was broadly fair and you got by on skill and > merit. I know this was all bunk. > > The essential component of intellectual growth is belonging to a group > free of infectious diseases - average IQ (however suspect a measure) > is reduced by this kind of disease. Over the years I've found some > solace in science, but it's clear this form of reasoning is only a > starting place. We lack any proper account of what science is, and as > usual the widely held ideas are plain wrong. Science is not value- > free or intellectually linear and requires massive effort, passion and > some clear-break thinking and a gereat deal of training on what > evidence amounts to and how it fits with theories. Its quest is truth > but a quest is not truth. > > My grandson (14) is having a hard time at school just now and like > most teenagers knows more or less 'sweet FA' - other than how to get > into arguments with his mother and into detention. He came home with > s story that WW1
