I’m here. (Where? Here. Where I said I’d be. At the Center for Inquiry, in Amherst, outside Buffalo, New York.) Jeremy’s here, Julian’s here, Joe Hoffman is here, Paul Kurtz (of course) is here, Tom Flynn, Nathan Bupp, and others. It’s good fun. I’ll tell you more later.
Comments
17 responses to “Just a note”
Are we there yet?
Oh.
Is it later yet?
Just to keep you in touch with UK affairs, Ophelia, there was a vicious attack on Rushdie by Terry Eagleton in the Guardian on Saturday:
>The knighting of Salman Rushdie is the establishment’s reward for a man who moved from being a remorseless satirist of the west to cheering on its criminal adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.< http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2120880,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/2pu4tw
Rushdie reply in today’s Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2121776,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/2wlksj
But then – Eagleton’s reality:
“Discourse, hybridity, otherness, sexuality, subversion, deviance, heterogeneity, popular culture, the body, the decentred self, the materiality of the sign, historicism, everyday life: this precocious post-structuralist, as Graham Pechey calls him, prefigured so much of our own times that it is surprising not to find allusions in his work to Posh and Becks.”
Terry Eagleton reviews Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World by Graham Pechey, LRB 21 June 2007
Silence them all when you sit down for dinner then say grace. Go on. I dare you.
Thanks, Allen. God what a terrible piece.
What ho Nick. Here I am with the secularists, including Ibn Warraq; what larks.
My pleasure as always, Ophelia.
Eagleton writes as if the 20th century didn’t happen.
Terry Eagleton, the airy totalitarian.
http://fatmanonakeyboard.blogspot.com/2007/07/its-all-gone-to-dogs.html
Good comment there and at Normblog
And don’t you just hate that every time someone ex-islamist or ex-Muslim says that islamism may not be that good a thing they immediately become “neo-con pin-ups”. The new “lackey of the bourgeoisie” or “betrayer of the workers” of the 1930’s epithet flung at those who were uneasy about show trials, famines etc.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-07-04.html#feature
EXCELLENT article in the eSkeptic on the state of inquiry into the adaptive benefits of religion. – linked from Arts and Letters Daily.
Beyond Demonic Memes
Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion
by David Sloan Wilson
>>> The problem with Dawkins’ analysis, however, is that if he doesn’t get the facts about religion right, his diagnosis of the problems and proffered solutions won’t be right either. If the bump on the shark’s nose is an organ, you won’t get very far by thinking of it as a wart. That is why Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, however well-intentioned, is so deeply misinformed.
On Scientific Open-Mindedness
Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”
This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.
It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.
>>>>
I fell in love with Dawkins when he wrote ‘The Blind Watchmaker” so I am not one of those ranting about him as a way-too-strident atheist. But this article was extremely illuminating about the state of understanding of evolution as it applies to groups and religion, and I am dying to read more.
ChrisPer – DSW skates way too quickly over the reasons that religion may be caused by evolved traits but not itself be adaptive. (See Breaking the Spell, for instance).
DSW’s anti-Dawkins thing is actually at least partly because Dawkins – in common with others – doesn’t (apparently) agree with DSW’s arguments about role for group selection.
OB, I’m sure you’ll be plenty busy with the seminars etc., but I asked my friend from Buffalo what was fun to do, and she mentioned the following:
“Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Science Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright house, Delaware Park (designed by Olmsted who also did Central Park), Niagara Falls, the zoo (3rd oldest in America!)”
So just in case you didn’t know anything about Buffalo and didn’t look it up, there are some of the places to have fun outings.
And on an unrelated note, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2122441,00.html
Helloooo
I just had ever such a nice lunch with Joe Hoffmann and Ibn Warraq and Jeremy and Julian and some other people. Hic (tiny glass of wine, that’s all). Julian is talking about the thin ice of reason in the lecture theatre, but I just slid out for a moment.
I told Ibn Warraq about Jesus and Mo – imagine his not knowing about it! Tragic!
I hope you included the essential bit about your being the barmaid.
That barmaid is STUNNING.
No I didn’t actually. I’m too modest.
Ophelia ‘The Barmaid’ Benson.
Has a kind of Sopranos ring to it; never mess with anyone whose middle name is ‘The’.
Hmmmmm – I quite fancy Ophelia ‘The Enforcer’ Benson.