> I have a piece in the weekend issue of an Australian newspaper, The
> Brisbane CourierMail, at
>
> http://www.couriermail.com.au/
>
> Find the Books section, then, under the story headed `Faith in fakes',
> click on the word < report >.
"Still, if you were trapped inside a temple next to a ticking bomb, who
would you rather have trying to defuse it: a well-trained rational bomb
disposal expert or the local holy man with a direct line to divine
intervention?"
I'll take option three: Why not have a well-trained rational bomb disposal
expert who is also a holy man with a direct line to divine intervention? Of
course, I wouldn't be in the temple to begin with- I probably planted the
bomb.
"Rene Descartes blew it back in the 17th century by supposing that humans
are cobbled together from a mechanical "android" body and a mysteriously
invisible, untouchable soul, an immaterial essence designed to survive the
corruption of the flesh."
Descartes didn't 'blow it', but he certainly didn't have the whole story.
Theologians and Neuroscientists are both blind, if you ask me.
"A rebound was inevitable, when Romanticism played up "authentic" blinding
passion at the expense of reasoning. Now we know better."
We do? At least the Romantics knew how to live and write great poetry.
Rationally, they also bucked the trends of their time- many of them were
atheists. I'd rather be in their camp than that of the "rationalists" of
any era.
"This discovery gets us some of the way out of the faith versus reason mess,
but we might still wonder why people believe such crazy things so readily.
Of course, we flatter ourselves that "our" deepest beliefs are
unquestionably true and make perfect sense."
At least you're honest, Damien.
> Just shuffling those memes into visibility like a trouper...
Well then, zeig heil!
-Nicq MacDonald
"We do progress, but how? Not by the tinkering of the meliorist; not by the
crushing of initiative; not by laws and regulations which hamstring the
racehorse, and handcuff the boxer; but by the innovations of the eccentric,
by the phantasies of the hashish-dreamer of philosophy, by the aspirations
of the idealist to the impossible, by the imagination of the revolutionary,
by the perilous adventure of the pioneer. Progress is by leaps and bounds,
by breaking from custom, by working on untried experiments; in short, by the
follies and crimes of men of genius, only recognizable as wisdom and virtue
after they have been tortured to death, and their murderers reap gloatingly
the harvest of the seeds they sowed at midnight." -Aleister Crowley, "On
Original Sin"
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