Links With Your Coffee - Thursday
Doonesbury
Iraq through the prism of Vietnam
The Vietnam War experience can’t tell us anything about the war in Iraq – or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind.
The Vietnam War had three phases. The War in Iraq has already completed an analogous first phase, is approaching the end of the second phase, and shows signs of entering the third.
Majikthise provides an excellent review of Dennett's Breaking the Spell Lindsay writes, "it has been systematically misrepresented by its critics. Frankly, I think a lot of them are getting hung up on the title. Breaking the Spell is not an attempt to discredit religion by subjecting it to scientific scrutiny. The "spell" Dennett wants to break is the taboo against the scientific study of religion."
Dub asks God to join Homeland Security.
Comments
"There is widespread concern that understanding religion as a natural phenomenon would undermine religious faith."
Among whom? Certainly not sociologists. Sociology was practically founded by a handful of figures whose main interest, or one of their main interests, was religion. In departments of sociology, political science and history where religion is neglected, it's not because people are worried about making religion seem more worldly. There's plenty of that in the social sciences and even conservative social scientists aren't trying to stop it on grounds of its pernicious social effects. Rather religion is neglected in some places because of the continuation of the secularization thesis. If religion is doomed to die out, why study it?
Do some theologians and other people in the humanities dismiss attempts to explain religion causally? Sure, but they have that attitude to all kinds of empirical explanation. They are primarily engaged in interpretive activities and it shouldn't be a surprise that they don't care much for such explanations of any human activities. But it's simply false to say that social scientists have some taboo against studying religion.
Dennett is a very important philosopher of mind and everything he publishes should be taken seriously. But it seems that he is confusing, deliberately or not, the empirical explanation of religion (against which there is no academic taboo at all) with the explanation of religion (as well as any number of other things) through sociobiology. There is some opposition to the latter among social scientists, but not on grounds that belief is good. Rather it stems from a serious philosophical and methodological dispute within the social sciences. That's not nearly as sexy as framing it as a dispute between believers and seculars, but it's the real truth.
"What if it became widely accepted that religions are the biological equivalent of masturbation..."
Does this comparison mean that Majikthise doesn't approve of masturbation (or just thinks that we don't), or only that she doesn't approve of it in its "biological equivalent" (i.e. religion)?
Thought-provoking review of Dennett's book. Thanks!
Huh?! I'm a malicious commenter?
I loved that Doonsebury when I saw it last week. It's great to see it again.
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