fresh hot Slavoj

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Thu Apr 13 09:42:49 PDT 2000



>[Two excerpts from Slavoj Zizek's The Fragile Absolute, advance
>copies of which just hit the Verso office. It will no doubt irritate
>people who don't like phrases like "Marx's fundamental mistake."]
>
>[pp 1-2]
>
>One of the most deplorable aspects of the postmodern era and its
>so-called 'thought' is the return of the religious dimension in all
>its different guises ...

Zizek is right on the money there. To share a couple of my favorite commentators on religion:

Thomas Paine: "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church." Or: "That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not." And: "The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."

Bertrand Russell: "Often I feel that religion, like the sun, has extinguished the stars of less brilliancy but not less beauty, which shine upon us out of the darkness of a godless universe. The splendor of human life, I feel sure, is greater to those who are not dazzled by the divine radiance; and human comradeship seems to grow more intimate and more tender from the sense that we are all exiles on an inhospitable shore."

Carl

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