science, magic, madness

[Ian Livingston]

Partial to Feuerbach's explanation of God, myself, as all that men deem
good bundled and safely projected such that we need never fear attaining
any real goodness. Maybe it's different for women. Of course maybe that
depends on whether you're talking to my beloved Other, or to Ann
Romney....or maybe to someone between the goal posts.



On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 6:54 PM, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:

> At this point in his career, Dawkins seems pretty much co-dependent on
> theology for his raison d'etre in the public eye, no? Is he doing any
> significant research these days?
>
> A' and maybe if those leprechauns were a little less self-centered and
> listened occassionally they wouldn't get such disrespect. It may be that
> the priviledged position of the current dispositon has more to do with
> political connections, however- It's alot easier to organize and control
> the masses with monotheism than dealing through a bunch of irresponsible
> local dieties, prone to pipes, pranks, ale and napping. That in itself
> might be a good enough reason resist the theological status quo. Who needs
> specious arguments about "selfish genes."
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: malignd <malignd at aol.com>
> To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tue, Apr 23, 2013 5:56 pm
> Subject: Re: science, magic, madness
>
> Would that theologians think as clearly as you.  Do you think that
> Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God were open-ended explorations?
>
> If theology is an explaination or an apology for a preordained conclusion
> then it can't be an argument, right?
>
> What I mainly mean about theology -- and Terry Eagleton made a similar
> point about Dawkins as yours -- is that the idea of a supernatural deity
> who created the universe and listens to each and everyone's prayers and for
> which there is not a shred of evidence, is the two thousand year old idea
> of a primitive, superstitious people that is somehow treated as a special
> case, different from, say, leprechauns.  Applying weighty thinking to such
> a notion does nothing toward making it anything other than that.  Dawkins
> is not remiss in ignoring theological posturing.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, Apr 22, 2013 7:54 pm
> Subject: Re: science, magic, madness
>
>  If theology is an explaination or an apology for a preordained
> conclusion then it can't be an argument, right?
>
> I assume you mean to say that the apology or explaination will eventually
> conclude with doubt or faith or the mystery of things or the ineffable we
> can only attributre to a divinity or things we can never know or undertand.
>
> This doesn't make the theologian's books or even theology a waste of our
> reading time. In fact, much of what we read from authors who are not
> theologians, and who don't write theology, provides little more than this.
> What more can a reader take from Alice in Wonderland or Pale Fire?
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 6:40 PM, <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> For the most part, Dawkins doesn't write about theology.  And comparing
>> theology or theologians to Hume or Derrida, is inept.  Theology is an
>> explanation or apology for a preordained conclusion:  one needn't read the
>> theologian to know where the argument will end.
>>
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Mon, Apr 22, 2013 5:48 am
>> Subject: Re: science, magic, madness
>>
>>    Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the
>> subject is the *Book of British Birds*, and you have a rough idea of
>> what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying
>> rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional
>> atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least
>> well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe
>> there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth
>> understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures
>> of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The
>> more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it
>> tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the
>> geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as
>> assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy
>> old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the
>> sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval
>> heyday.
>>  Dawkins on God is rather like those right-wing Cambridge dons who filed
>> eagerly into the Senate House some years ago to non-placet Jacques Derrida
>> for an honorary degree. Very few of them, one suspects, had read more than
>> a few pages of his work, and even that judgment might be excessively
>> charitable. Yet they would doubtless have been horrified to receive an
>> essay on Hume from a student who had not read his *Treatise of Human
>> Nature*.
>>
>> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 5:43 AM, alice wellintown <
>> alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  "...* applied science, purposeful and determined, and pure science,
>>> playful and freely curious, continuously support and stimulate each other.
>>> The great nation of the future will be the one which protects the freedom
>>> of pure science as much as it encourages applied science.*"
>>>
>>> http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2876.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 5:40 AM, alice wellintown <
>>> alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22105898
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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