Archive for October 2009

5:30 AM At The Hotcake House

In Photography on 10 October 2009 with Comments Off

Granting Religion Immunity

In Books, Secularism on 10 October 2009 with 1 comment

The Age of American Unreason (Powells)
by Susan Jacoby

Misguided objectivity, particularly with regard to religion, ignores the willed ignorance that is one of the defining characteristics of fundamentalism. One of the most powerful taboos in American life concerns speaking ill of anyone’s faith — an injunction rooted in confusion over the difference between freedom of religion and granting religion immunity from the critical scrutiny applied to other social institutions. Both the Constitution and the pragmatic realities of living in a pluralistic society enjoin us to respect our fellow citizens’ right to believe whatever they want — as long as their belief, in Thomas Jefferson’s phrase, “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” But many Americans have misinterpreted this sensible laissez-faire principle to mean that respect must be accorded the beliefs themselves. This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. Millions of Americans are perfectly free, under the Constitution, to believe that the Lord of Hosts is coming one day to murder millions of others who do not consider him the Messiah, but the rest of the public ought to exercise its freedom to identify such beliefs as dangerous fallacies that really do pick pockets and break legs.

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Some Playful Stunt

In Books, Nonsense on 9 October 2009 with Comments Off

Generosity: An Enhancement (Powells)
by Richard Powers

From where I sit, the whole human race did something stupid when young — pulled some playful stunt that damaged someone. The secret to survival is forgetting. If evolution favored conscience, everything with a backbone would have hanged itself from a ceiling fan eons ago, and invertebrates would once again be running the place.

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Trapped American Secularists

In Books, Secularism on 8 October 2009 with Comments Off

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (Powells)
by Susan Jacoby

The fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans say they believe in God and (in much smaller numbers) regularly attend church does not mean that a coherent secularist message will fall on deaf ears. … [M]ost Americans, whatever their religious views, have a healthy respect for the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. And most oppose the religious right’s attempts to sacralize decisions. … The problem is that religious fundamentalists care more about religious issues than the rest of the public does, and they do more to see that their views are heard. They have dominated public discourse and have trapped American secularists between two poles. On the one hand, secularists are credited with exaggerated importance by those who have swallowed the argument that the nonreligious have already won the day; on the other, secularists are attacked (sometimes by the same people) as enemies of majoritarian, by definition religious, American values. The antisecularists cannot have it both ways. If secularists are in charge of everything, then America is not as religious as the religiously correct claim; if secularists are an insolent minority trying to erode the values of the majority, then they are not in charge of everything.

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Now What

In Nonsense on 7 October 2009 with Comments Off

I’ve lived in New York (Castleton, Glenmont, Latham, Delmar, Purchase, Chappaqua, Manhattan, Long Island City, Brooklyn, Yonkers). I’ve visited Canada (Toronto). I’ve visited France (Lyons, Paris). I’ve lived in Illinois (Chicago). I’ve lived in California (San Francisco). I’ve lived in Oregon (Portland). I’ve visited Connecticut (Hartford), Massachusetts (Boston, East Longmeadow, Truro), Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), Michigan (Port Sanilac), Texas (Amarillo, Austin), Georgia (Atlanta), Minnesota (Minneapolis), Washington (Olympia, Seattle), elsewhere. I’ve seen bus stations between New York and Illinois. I’ve seen train stops between New York and San Francisco. I’ve seen airports in Texas, North Carolina, elsewhere. Portland has nothing left for me, and I have nothing left for it. But no where which I’ve seen calls either. Now what?