2010

Atheism is not fundamentalism

politics, religion, science / /

From PZ Myers’s “High Priest Epstein in Newsweek” (Pharyngula: 14 June 2007):

The “new atheism” (I don’t like that phrase, either) is about taking a core set of principles that have proven themselves powerful and useful in the scientific world — you’ve probably noticed that many of these uppity atheists are coming out of a scientific background — and insisting that they also apply to everything else people do. These principles are a reliance on natural causes and demanding explanations in terms of the real world, with a documentary chain of evidence, that anyone can examine. The virtues are critical thinking, flexibility, openness, verification, and evidence. The sins are dogma, faith, tradition, revelation, superstition, and the supernatural. There is no holy writ, and a central idea is that everything must be open to rational, evidence-based criticism — it’s the opposite of fundamentalism.

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There, on the Darkened Deathbed by John Masefield

art, commonplace book, language & literature, religion / /

This is pretty much what I think happens when we die, and unfortunately, what happens eventually after we die.

There, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain
That flared three several times in seventy years;
It cannot lift the silly hand again,
Nor speak, nor sing, it neither sees nor hears.
And muffled mourners put it in the ground
And then go home, and in the earth it lies,
Too dark for vision and too deep for sound,
The million cells that made a good man wise.
Yet for a few short years an influence stirs,
A sense or wraith or essence of him dead,
Which makes insensate things its ministers
To those beloved, his spirit’s daily bread;
Then that, too, fades; in book or deed a spark
Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark.

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Luther & Poe both complained about too many books

art, business, history, on writing, technology / /

From Clay Shirky’s “Does The Internet Make You Smarter?” (The Wall Street Journal: 5 June 2010):

In the history of print … complaints about distraction have been rampant; no less a beneficiary of the printing press than Martin Luther complained, “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever for writing.” Edgar Allan Poe, writing during another surge in publishing, concluded, “The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information.”

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Poetry: Johnny Mercer’s “Early Autumn”

art, language & literature / /

Man, these are beatiful, evocative lyrics by Johnny Mercer:

When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze
and touches with her hand the summer trees,
perhaps you’ll understand what memories I own.

There’s a dance pavilion in the rain all shuttered down,
a winding country lane all russet brown,
a frosty window pane shows me a town grown lonely.

That spring of ours that started so April-hearted,
seemed made for just a boy and girl.
I never dreamed, did you, any fall would come in view
so early, early.

Darling if you care, please, let me know,
I’ll meet you anywhere, I miss you so.
Let’s never have to share another early autumn.

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