Friday, April 8, 2005
Friday morning, Seattle (sunny!)
Thinking about these days:
“The Enlightenment came into being by expelling or marginalizing the religious perspective without which some of the oddest vagaries of the human drama become incomprehensible.”
“There may be no more urgent task today than that of renouncing religious superstition and freeing ourselves from its grip, but we’re not likely to do so by abandoning the spiritual tradition that taught us to be wary of religious superstition in the first place.”
Gil Bailie, “Violence Unveiled”
April 8th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Interesting. I was thinking of similar things early this morning while I watched the funeral for John Paul II.
I think doubt is something that we need more of right now. I remember while I was in the West Bank reading an opinion article in an Israeli paper about the “power of certainty.” I remeber thinking about the settlers I encountered in Hebron and how certain they seemed about what they were doing there and why. Certainty leads us to close out other people, doubt causes us to question the things around us and ourselves as well.
I think there is too much certainty in religion throughout the world today. I was thinking that John Paul spent a lot of time questioning and how that affected me.
April 8th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
It’s a good book. It makes interesting links between religion, culture, and violence.
He talks about the fascination we have with violence as is clear from our news reports and many of our movies. He looks at the violent movies that depict a hero ( say Schwarzeneger) who experiences such outrages that he is justified in taking the law in his own hands and killing the evildoers. He then takes it further by arguing that identifying a victim who deserves a violent death brings about social cohesion. He argues that such acts are foundational to societies and religions.
Then he gets into this interesting part on desire and envy. Societies nurture desire and envy and then try to control the violence that the desires can arouse by diverting the violence upon an individual or group… I’m not doing it justice.