“Morality is an “acquired dialect”, which is a very useful metaphor. Like a dialect, it is conventional, and varies by geography. It is not inborn (although the capacity to acquire it, like that of language, is), and it doesn’t correlate with biology (a Sicilian raised in Japan would speak Japanese, not Sicilian). This is what Sayre-McCord refers to as social conventions. And these things evolve at the social level, not (in general) at the biological. So to explain why, for example, it is regarded as moral to marry a first cousin in Louisiana, but not in London, while marrying within “seven degrees of kinship” in Orthodox society, or marrying anyone with the same family name in Korea (but a first cousin of a different name is acceptable) are considered taboo; these things are best explained in terms of the historical process at the level of social institutions, conventions, economic and cultural factors, rather than biology.

But explaining why it is that humans are disposed to learn and accommodate themselves to these cultural rules is another matter. Moreover, it may be that some moral rules are in fact biologically based, or biased, or at least agreeable. (…)”

“Barack Obama delivered a truly brilliant and inspiring speech this week. There were a few things, however, that he did not and could not (and, indeed, should not) say:

He did not say that the mess he is in has as much to do with religion as with racism–and, indeed, religion is the reason why our political discourse in this country is so scandalously stupid. As Christopher Hitchens observed in Slate months ago, one glance at the website of the Trinity United Church of Christ should have convinced anyone that Obama’s connection to Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. would be a problem at some point in this campaign. Why couldn’t Obama just cut his ties to his church and move on?

Well, among other inexpediencies, this might have put his faith in Jesus in question. After all, Reverend Wright was the man who brought him to the “foot of the cross.” Might the Senator from Illinois be unsure whether the Creator of the universe brought forth his only Son from the womb of a Galilean virgin, taught him the carpenter’s trade, and then had him crucified for our benefit? Few suspicions could be more damaging in American politics today.”

Zombie Last Supper

Popped Culture, Suddenly Last Supper:

“There’s nothing like a couple thousand years of of repetition and an iconic painting by an Old Master to get story to get lodged inside the heads of the creators of pop culture. Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th century depiction of Jesus announcing that one of his 12 disciples would betray him is so iconic that it has been co-opted by those wishing to give weight to their parodies, tributes and caricatures. What I find interesting is who gets portrayed as Christ and who gets to be his Judas.”

““Explaining Religion”, as the project is known, is the largest-ever scientific study of the subject. It began last September, will run for three years, and involves scholars from 14 universities and a range of disciplines from psychology to economics. And it is merely the latest manifestation of a growing tendency for science to poke its nose into the God business.

Religion cries out for a biological explanation. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon—arguably one of the species markers of Homo sapiens—but a puzzling one. It has none of the obvious benefits of that other marker of humanity, language. Nevertheless, it consumes huge amounts of resources. Moreover, unlike language, it is the subject of violent disagreements. Science has, however, made significant progress in understanding the biology of language, from where it is processed in the brain to exactly how it communicates meaning. Time, therefore, to put religion under the microscope as well.”

The Four Horsemen – Hour 1

The Four Horsemen – Hour 2

RichardDawkins.net, The Four Horsemen: on Christmas:

“All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion – some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public’s reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face to world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.”

“X. Gij zult niet begeren uws naasten huis; gij zult niet begeren uws naasten vrouw, noch zijn dienstknecht, noch zijn dienstmaagd, noch zijn rund, noch zijn ezel, noch iets dat van uw naaste is

„Wat schiet je op met verlangen? Je moet het doen of je moet het niet doen. Ik heb een betekenis achter willen laten, onsterfelijk willen worden. Daar heb je niets aan als je dood bent – Beethoven is onsterfelijk voor iedereen, behalve voor zichzelf – maar het is voor nu wel een prettige gedachte.(…)”"

“We do, however, need to be clearer about the difference between secularism and atheism. Secularism, in my view, should be an argument about arrangements for a shared public and social life; atheism is an argument about scientific truth, individual liberation and the nature of the good life. Today’s debate around Islam is bedevilled by a confusion between the two. Atheists must be free to say to Muslims, Christians or Jews: “Your mind would be much more free if you gave up your ridiculous belief in God.” Believers must be free to argue back: “You would have a more profound sense of personal freedom if you did believe.” But neither is entitled to demand that of the other as a condition for participating as a citizen in a free society. The public policy argument about freedom for religion and the private conviction argument about freedom from or in religion should operate on different levels.”

“Freedom Go To Hell”, Londen, 3 februari 2006.

Times, The Blasphemy Collection:

“The concept of blasphemy seemed for some decades to be in decline in the West, but not any more. It may be useful to look back at some recent cases of militantly religious outrage…

Rated by
Vulgarity –the piece shocked through its conflation of the sacred and the profane
Criminality –the piece contravened laws in a given country
Religious impact –the work caused outrage from religious leaders
Political impact –speeches were made by governments, laws were created or changed.
Deaths – outrage at the work led to the death of one or more people”

(via)

Flying Spaghetti Monster – Touched by his noodly appendage. (Wikipedia)

AP, Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster:

“”For a lot of people they’re just sort of fun responses to religion, or fun responses to organized religion. But I think it raises real questions about how people approach religion in their lives,” said Samuel Snyder, one of the three Florida graduate students who will give talks at the meeting next Monday along with Alyssa Beall of Syracuse University.

The presenters’ titles seem almost a parody themselves of academic jargon. Snyder will speak about “Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion,” while Gavin Van Horn’s presentation is titled “Noodling around with Religion: Carnival Play, Monstrous Humor, and the Noodly Master.”

Using a framework developed by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, Van Horn promises in his abstract to explore how, “in a carnivalesque fashion, the Flying Spaghetti Monster elevates the low (the bodily, the material, the inorganic) to bring down the high (the sacred, the religiously dogmatic, the culturally authoritative).”"

“Er is een onoverbrugbaar verschil tussen geloof en vrije wetenschapsbeoefening. Cees Dekker vermengt beide op ontoelaatbare wijze.”

Bovenstaande naar aanleiding van Dekker, Stel grenzen aan het gesleutel aan de mens.

Jonathan Miller geinterviewd door Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers interviewt Jonathan Miller naar aanleiding van diens BBC-serie A Rough History of Disbelief uit 2005, binnenkort in de VS door PBS uit te zenden. De 3-delige serie is in fragmenten of integraal ook hier (wederom) te bekijken. Bijzonder de moeite waard.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was written in the 1890s, possibly by the Russian-French journalist Matthieu Golovinski, and spread by the Tsarist secret police. A forgery, it claimed to be the manual of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.

Bat Ye’or, author of the little-read but influential book Eurabia, repeatedly mentions the Protocols. Well she might, because Eurabia has been described as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in reverse. Bat Ye’or is Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile’’, the pseudonym of a woman who fled Egypt as a Jew in 1957 and now lives in Switzerland. In Eurabia, she purports to reveal an Arab-European conspiracy to rule the world.

Though ludicrous, Eurabia became the spiritual mother of a genre. Ye’or’s genius was to bridge two waves of anti-European books: those of 2002-03, which said Europe had gone anti-Semitic again, and those of 2006-07, which say Europe is being conquered by Muslims.

The four books here provide a fair summary of the “Eurabia’’ genre. False as they are, their existence reveals something about the geopolitical moment.”

(via)

Sir David Attenborough on God

“Faith will unsettle politics everywhere this century; it will do so least when it is separated from the state”

The Economist: Faith and politics. The new wars of religion:

“Atheists and agnostics hate the fact, but these days religion is an inescapable part of politics.”

“Church officials in Venice and Rome turned a blind eye to these activities, but reluctantly investigated some of the most blatant and scandalous cases. The Italian academic Guido Ruggiero has pored over countless documents to find that only 33 convents were prosecuted for “sex crimes against God” (as they were called, since the nuns were in theological terms the brides of Christ). The legal details read like a cheesy Italian soap opera.”