*********************************************************************** Robert,
I agree that atheism is a social construction and not a product of genetic determination. So are science and religion. The diff, to my mind, is that science is based on discovering and analysing material/energy phenomena, while relgion and scientism are essentially, faith based. In the article, Gray seems to agree as well when he compares 20th Century atheistic "narratives" e.g. Nazism and Communism. What Gray implies in his essay is that humans have a biological urge to become religious. I think, this is confusing curiosity, a biological urge based on survival instinct and pleasure with ideolgical, faith based, social constructions.
Mike B)
The carbon atoms in your body were forged inside a star somewhere, billions of years ago. http://www.myspace.com/ballardoso
--- On Tue, 3/6/08, Robert Wrubel <bobwrubel at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Nicholas Ruiz III posted:
>
> The atheist delusion
>
> John Gray on why the 'secular fundamentalists' have
> got it all wrong
>
> Saturday March 15, 2008
> The Guardian
>
>
> http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,2265446,00.html#article_continue
>
>
>
>
> Gray wrote:
>
> Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like
> repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise. In the 20th
> century, when it commanded powerful states and mass
> movements, it helped engender totalitarianism. Today, the
> result is a climate of hysteria. Not everything in religion
> is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an
> inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the
> Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists
> share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also
> made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express
> their sexuality, control their fertility and end their
> lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody
> should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no
> religion has the right to break the peace.
>
> ***************
>
> IMO, unlike sex, religion is not genetically driven;
> it's a social construction, as all ideologies are
> social constructions. I agree that religion should not be
> legally suppressed by secular/atheist dogmatics. I abhor
> theocratic States. I also have problems with Gray's
> assumption that humans don't change over historical
> epochs, kind of a variation on the old conservative mantra:
> the more things change, the more they remain the same.
> While humans retain many attributes which they had when
> they lived mostly in caves, they've also developed much
> further, especially along the road of attaining greater
> levels of reason e.g. we find slavery and cannibalism
> abominations today; but we accepted them and even justified
> them using ideologies in times going back to the beginnings
> of class society.
>
> The problem I think Gray is getting at is the use of
> ideologies to justify inhumane, abusive acts.
>
> For the end of prehistory,
>
> Mike B)
>
>
> The carbon atoms in your body were forged inside a star
> somewhere, billions of years ago.
> http://www.myspace.com/ballardoso
>
>
> Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email
> address.
> www.yahoo7.com.au/mail
>
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