Year: 2010

As I mentioned, I’m reading Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great”, after originally avoiding it as just part of the God vs Science hysterical debates of the past two years, but discovering I like what Hitchens has to say.

OK so GING is “the case against” religion, an unrelenting damnation that could easily offend his target audience. Hard for anyone to argue against the rehearsed arguments on metaphysics, design and revelation. The chapters unpicking the mono-theist texts, revealed by the key prophets and embellished by their priests, are almost too easy as to be boring, were in not for Hitchens style – clever, witty entertaining. I’m reminded of Clayton’s rhetorical put down of Dawkins “after all, he writes so beatifully“. But this is after all a war of wits.

Despite the unrelenting attack, Hitchens’ real quality does shine through. In Chapter 11 “The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin”: Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings, he focusses on the charlattans that have invented (and abandoned) new religions and cults for their own nefarious purposes – Mormons, and assorted perverted evangelist churches for example. After acknowledging Darwin’s “stamp” in the chapter title, and opening with a quote from the “simply divine” Gibbon …

“The various forms of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

He acknowledges Dennett’s analysis of religion as a natural phenomenon, and following his section  on the Mormon fraudster Joseph Smith (and others) he concludes …

“In other words was he a huckster all the time, or was there a pulse [of greater but misguided good] inside him somewhere ? The study of religion suggests to me that, while it cannot possibly get along without great fraud and also minor fraud, this remains a fascinating and somewhat open question.”

Hooray. Good intentions can only ever be an excuse for bad decsions and actions, but believed intentions need to be understood, explained and made more likely to result in good decisions and actions in future. And what is good …

Bill Thomson on the “.me” Montenegro domain name.

“More and more people just go to their favourite search engine, type in what they’re looking for and don’t actually look for where it’s going.”

“So, although people might want a good domain … I just don’t think they’re as important as they were. And I don’t think they should be.”

Can’t argue with the final sentiment. Certainly they have initial attention grabbing value, in any new venture, but the names that stick go beyond fashion.

The Half-Moon lives to rock another day.

Joining up the dots has been a mantra of mine for 3 years or so (and a project under germination for most of that time) so interesting to hear this language from Obama.

“Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

The important semantics (and values) are in the connections. And by the way, I agree with Mardell here too.

Just a quickie. I’m reading Hitchens “God is not Great”. I admitted earlier, when I heard him talking, that I had understimated Hitchens in all the God vs Science hysteria. Will the intelligent world ever live down guilt by association with Dawkins !? Thank god for Dennett, Harris and Hitchens (and the Archbishop). Only a couple of chapters in … excellent read so far.

This struck me. After a litany of religiously compromised and politicised diabolical health-care decisions, he says … in passing … before continuing with his litany.

It happened to be election year in New York for the mayor, which often explains a lot.

My recurring point. You bet it explains most of the problem. It’s the decision-making meme at work (not theistic religion particularly – though how anyone could defend the organized religion examples in Hitchens health-care chapter is nevertheless beyond me). And it’s the decision-making meme at work in situations of governance and management. Reducing ethical decisions to binary choice has to be the dumbest solution to a complex problem – come in Mary Parker-Follett.

Bl**dy reductionist scientism again (see previous post).

Typical George Monbiot piece in the Guardian. A rant against consumerism leading to a call for a movement against consumerism. Well yeah, but for what ? He is right when he says …

“Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalised.”

But I think you need to broaden your search for the cuplrit system, beyond consumerism itself. Most people really are more intelligent than to ignore the detrimental aspects of comsuming whilst ignoring the collateral damage.

The internalised system – the meme – we are suffering from, is one that leads us to expect simple logical considerations like this to be reflected in collective action. We have come to rely, through their immense success, on the processes of science and technology to lead us to “the right decisions and actions” as if by faith in their empirical, objective and reductionist magic.

We have internalized the “scientism” meme, at the expense of values and wisdom, in all aspects of living on the planet.

What we need is a movement for wisdom, values, quality … you name it … to counterbalance the idol of objectivity in numbers and logic.

Not expecting a quick return to Reading – Hmmm ?