"5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe."
Number 5 is quite the double-edged sword, wouldn't you say, where it says, "so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others"?
Since when has religion NOT been a threat to science and to freedom? Pretty much, NOT since the beginning of time.
I think my avatar suggests that we're still pretty far away from religion/politics NOT acting as a bully to the scientific community, as well as the world community.
Rational Atheism
by bavman 11 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Madame Quixote
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nvrgnbk
Good points, Madame Q.
Check this out, changeling:
http://ravingatheist.com/archives/2004/09/the_end_of_faith.php
The End of Faith - Mon, Sep 6, 2004
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris recommends a policy of zero tolerance toward religion. After seeing it trashed by a clueless agnostic at Salon, I'd lost all hope of reading a fair appraisal of that most excellent book. But yesterday the New York Times published a review a by its house atheist, Natalie Angier. All I can say is "Amen":
It's not often that I see my florid strain of atheism expressed in any document this side of the Seine, but ''The End of Faith'' articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated, almost personally understood. Sam Harris presents major religious systems like Judaism, Christianity and Islam as forms of socially sanctioned lunacy, their fundamental tenets and rituals irrational, archaic and, important when it comes to matters of humanity's long-term survival, mutually incompatible. A doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say in contemporary America: ''We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad,' 'psychotic' or 'delusional.'
Angier anticipates for the firestorm that's likely to be sparked by her review with a classic understatement: "You may also think it inappropriate that a mainstream newspaper be seen as obliquely condoning an attack on religious belief." But, as she immediately notes, "[t] hat reaction, in Harris's view, is part of the problem":
Criticizing a person's faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture. On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse. Criticizing a person's ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not.
By coincidence, I bought the book on Friday night, and was particularly impressed with what Angier describes as Harris' "particular ire for religious moderates." He nails it right on the head:
The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance�and it has no bona fides, in religious terms, to put it on a par with fundamentalism.
The first chapter, "Reason in Exile", is available online here. It's well worth reading, especially the subsection The Myth of "Moderation" in Religion, from which the above-quoted language is taken.