Ramblings & ephemera
From Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Imagining Abrupt Climate Change : Terraforming Earth” (Amazon Shorts: 31 July 2005):
This view, by the way, was in keeping with a larger and older paradigm called gradualism, the result of a dramatic and controversial paradigm shift of its own from the nineteenth century, one that is still a contested part of [...]
Posted on July 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Steve Paulson’s “The disbeliever” (Salon: 7 July 2006):
But it does raise the question, what do you mean by spiritual? And what do you mean by mystical?
By spiritual and mystical — I use them interchangeably — I mean any effort to understand and explore happiness and well-being itself through deliberate uses of attention. Specifically, to [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Steve Paulson’s “The disbeliever” (Salon: 7 July 2006):
In perhaps his most daring rhetorical gambit, Harris seeks to undermine religion by denouncing not just jihadis and fundamentalists, but moderates. “Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world,” he writes, “because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Geoffrey Gagnon’s “King James I, of Michigan” (Legal Affairs: September/October 2005):
One letter that isn’t on display is the one that James Jesse Strang said he received from Smith just before the Mormon leader was murdered in June 1844. In the letter, which now resides in a university library, Smith bequeaths the nascent Mormon Church [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Douglas Rushkoff’s “Faith = Illness: Why I’ve had it with religious tolerance“:
When religions are practiced, as they are by a majority of those in developed nations, today, as a kind of nostalgic little ritual - a community event or an excuse to get together and not work - it doesn’t really screw anything up [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Richard Dawkins’ “Time to Stand Up“:
It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say “Enough!” Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to [...]
Posted on April 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Douglas Adams’ “Is there an Artificial God?“:
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any [...]
Posted on April 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Gore Vidal, quoted in Richard Dawkins’ “Time to Stand Up“:
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the [...]
Posted on April 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Salon’s “Religious belief itself is an adaptation“, an interview with Edward O. Wilson:
Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions. Religion is intensely tribalistic. A devout Christian or Muslim doesn’t say one religion is as good as another. It gives them faith in the particular group [...]
Posted on April 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Religion, science | Comments Off