From: William Benzon (bbenzon@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed 11 Jun 2003 - 13:16:07 GMT
------ Forwarded Message
> From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com>
> Organization: http://human-nature.com
> Reply-To: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@scientist.com>
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 13:25:04 +0100
> To: <evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [evol-psych] Rationally speaking
>
> The New Humanist
>
> Rationally speaking
>
> A monthly e-column by Massimo Pigliucci
>
> It's the fundamentalism, stupid!
>
> At the cost of oversimplifying an overly complex situation, I propose that the
> major threat to modern democracies is not terrorism per se, but ideological
> fundamentalism, particularly of a religious nature. Political fundamentalism
> has now essentially disappeared, at least for now, with Fidel Castro as one of
> the few pathetic remnants, destined to soon disappear naturally into oblivion,
> like all mortals.
>
> No,the real problem is religious fundamentalism, and in particular the one
> rooted in the twin monotheistic branches of Christianity and Islam (with
> Judaism ranking as a distant third only because it is numerically much less
> represented worldwide). This is not, of course, because every (or even the
> majority) of fundamentalist Christians, Muslims and Jews are willing to blow
> themselves into pieces to achieve a political goal, or because they are all
> bent toward the destruction of everything and everyone that disagrees with
> them. Far from it. But the fact remains that fundamentalism of any sort, by
> definition a form of extremism and therefore ill-suited to live within a
> democratic and pluralistic society, easily breeds intolerance,
> self-righteousness, and even more extremes, of which the world has experienced
> the consequences all too clearly during the past few years.
>
> Let us not make the mistake of dismissing the problem as simply a modern
> incarnation of the old (and certainly true) observation that political power
> exploits religious feelings, and that therefore the problem is with the greed
> for power and with people like Saddam Hussein (or George Bush) who want power
> and find it easy to manipulate the masses using religious appeals. There
> surely
> is part of that going on too, but George W. Bush, I think, really believes
> that
> God is on his side, and so do Tony Blair, Hussein, Bin Laden, and a host of
> other characters that are concurring in making a mess of the just-born 21st
> century.
>
> Full text
> http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/othervoices/rs/rs0306.htm
>
>
>
>
> News in Brain and Behavioural Sciences - Issue 98 - 8th June, 2003
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs/issue98.html
> Human Nature Review http://human-nature.com/
> Evolutionary Psychology http://human-nature.com/ep/
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
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