From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Mon Oct 13 2003 - 09:40:43 MDT
At 06:25 PM 12/10/03 -0600, metahuman wrote:
>While I am definitely not a supporter of the Brights, I am quite enraged
>that the editors of WSJ's Opinion Journal have the audacity to publish an
>article that bashes atheism, atheists everywhere, and especially some
>incredible folks like Daniel Dennett.
>
>http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004153
>
>Thankfully, there are other atheists who do read Opinion Journal and have
>responded quite intelligently to the editorial.
Thanks for pointing this out. Don't know if they will use it, but . . .
In his opinion piece Mr. D'Souza makes an ad hominem attack (implying
atheists are "seditious") on the respected cognitive scientist Dr. (not
Mr.) Dennett. That is unworthy of both academia and the Times.
In the US those who self identify as atheists (900,000) is close to the
number of Muslims (1,100,000). If you include agnostics (990,000) and
those claiming no religion the US "non churched" swells to nearly 30
million. (Source: The American Religious Identification Survey
2001) That's a lot of people to be "dising."
Further, Mr. D'Souza supporting theism with an argument Kant made in the
1700s before human senses were extended by everything from cyclotrons to
MRI seems inconsistent with his previous praise for materialist Western
culture. (As reported last week, we can now see brain activity such as the
pain from social rejection.) However, a bit of a web search turns up
reason$ Mr. D'Souza might be "suggestible" in a theist direction.
I don't self-identify as a "bright" but I can see their point in trying to
get away from derogatory labels the way other groups have done. My
interest in memetics and evolutionary psychology (try sex drugs cults in
Google) has led me to a profound appreciation of religions and their
functions. Alas, for me the ability to appreciate a tree seems to
preclude being one.
Keith Henson
PS Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer (another cognitive scientist) is
well worth reading.
--- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Oct 13 2003 - 09:39:46 MDT