Tuesday, August 14, 2007

More of the same

Harvey Mansfield in the Weekly Standard (still faithfully losing a million dollars each year) offers his opinion on the recent atheist tracts. It is filled with the usual appeals, "we might infer," "we can suspect," "Edmund Burke speculated," ect., and the usual canard that atheism produced the greatest tyranny ever know (sorry it was Marxism and Fascism both violent, totalitarian ideologies of which Fascism was not atheistic but rather had more similarities with ancient paganism) Yes we all know the traditional connection people have made between God, government, and morality but he does nothing to answer the obvious objection that since David Hume anyone exercising epistemological diligence will find it impossible to believe in god. And he furthermore is blind to the fact that it is the contention of these books that as science makes it more and more impossible to believe in god even for the philosophical layman we should try to find a different basis for our ethics- specifically one which takes account of human experience and suffering, which appeals to god do not- a point with which Sam Harris is especially concerned. And any view to history will find that religions negate the value of human suffering hence the use of fire to purify souls during the Inquisition and the cult of suffering and poverty started by Mother Teresa. So I think that in the 21st century it is not outrageous of us to claim that with all the outrages against human dignity through human history maybe the most familiar aspect of human society (religion) ought to be jettisoned as it loses it value in explaining the world. (it has already done this)

3 comments:

flymorgue2 said...

All this next to a Google ad for Mormon underwear? If you can't beat them, at least make some bread off them?

you write: "we should try to find a different basis for our ethics"

Try again? After 100 million killed by Communists, who employed all the powers of science to support their atheism (hardly were they pagans in a reasonable sense).

Harve writes: "[the new atheism] claims to be more moral than religion. But it cannot do this without becoming just as heated, thus just as susceptible to fanaticism, as religion."

Should we try again to test the perfectibility of humans? Or learn that while we desire justice we will never enjoy it on this world.

Bill said...

Communists used all the powers of science only justify their Marxism and ended up only perverting science.

I don't think it is fanaticism to stand up and speak against something one thinks is destructive.

As for the Mormon underwear ads they are put there by Google because I signed up to allow ads on the site but so far have only gotten the random ones assigned there. I have no control over it but it is probably because the word "Romney" appears on my blog albeit disparaging him.

Bill said...

So tell you friends flymorgue and maybe I'll have some real advertisers.