(Ir)religiosity

One of the unfortunate side effects of so-called “new” atheism (besides general intransigent arrogance and a lack of intellectual honesty) has been further (false) dichotomization of science and religion and rigid entrenchment into the reductionistic foxholes of scientism and religious fundamentalism.  Positivistic intellectuals like ‘Ditchkins’ and your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety Christianists like, say, Ken Ham or Carl Wieland are ready to hedge their bets on the misguided and myopic supposition that the discourses of science and religion fundamentally and foundationally incompatible.  The irony in all this is that both camps are both partially correct yet completely wrong in asserting complete epistemological superiority.  The similarities of the new atheists and religious fundamentalists has been well documented.  I don’t want to rehash that position except to take note of the core assertion:  that when it comes to matters of exclusivity, intolerance, and arrogance new atheism and religious fundamentalism more similar than they are different, functioning as mirror images of the core logic, shadow-boxers or ships passing in the night, one might say.  Which is why the vitriolic arguments are, at times, just as entertaining as they are tiresome.

This brings me to Jon Stewart’s great interview with Marilynne Robinson last night on The Daily Show promoting her new book Absence of Mind. See the video below after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Hedges, one of my favorite journalists, describes it:

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.

And then there are the words of Jesus, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.”

And then there is this.

Does. Not. Compute.

I’m pretty sure when Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers he wasn’t referring to the Colt variety.

…especially after this.