NRIII
--
> 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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Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III Associate Professor Department of Humanities, Cultural and Studio Arts Daytona Beach College PO Box 2811 Daytona Beach, FL 32120-2811 Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org