Reactionary Birth Control
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Category Archives: Education
Paul Krugman: Ignorance Is Streangth
. . . So why are [Reactionaries] so eager to trash higher education?
It’s not hard to see what’s driving Mr. Santorum’s wing of the party. His specific claim that college attendance undermines faith is, it turns out, false. But he’s right to feel that our higher education system isn’t friendly ground for current [reactionary] ideology. And it’s not just liberal-arts professors: among scientists, self-identified Democrats outnumber self-identified Republicans nine to one.
I guess Mr. Santorum would see this as evidence of a liberal conspiracy. Others might suggest that scientists find it hard to support a party in which denial of climate change has become a political litmus test, and denial of the theory of evolution is well on its way to similar status.
What These Popular Reactionary Phrases Really Mean
Is Britain A Christian Country? / The Big Questions / Richard Dawkins
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Religious [Reich] on Dangers of Public Schools
Sam Harris: Life Without God, An Interview with Tim Prowse
Can you describe the process by which you lost your belief in the teachings of your Church?
An interesting thing happened while I was studying at East Texas Baptist University: I was told not to read Rudolf Bultmann. I asked myself: Why? What were they protecting me from? I picked up Bultmann’s work, and that decision is the catalyst that ultimately paved the road to today. Throughout my educational journey, which culminated in an Ordination from the United Methodist Church where I’ve served for seventeen years, I’ve continued to ask the question “Why?”
Ironically, it was seminary that inaugurated my leap of unfaith. It was so much easier to believe when living in an uncritical, unquestioning, naïve state. Seminary training with its demands for rigorous and intentional study and reflection coupled with its values of reason and critical inquiry began to undermine my naïveté. I discovered theologians, philosophers and authors I never knew existed. I found their questions stimulating but their answers often unsatisfying. For example, the Bible is rife with vileness evidenced by stories of sexual exploitation, mass murder and arbitrary mayhem. How do we harmonize this fact with the conception of an all-loving, all-knowing God? While many have undertaken to answer this question even in erudite fashion, I found their answers lacking. Once I concluded that the Bible was a thoroughly human product and the God it purports does not exist, other church teachings, such as communion and baptism, unraveled rather quickly. To quote Nietzsche, I was seeing through a different “perspective” – a perspective based on critical thinking, reason and deduction. By honing these skills over time, reason and critical thinking became my primary tools and faith quickly diminished. Ultimately, these tools led to the undoing of my faith rather than the strengthening of it.
The Inevitable Triumph Of Reason Over Religion
But reason has an enemy…
Its name is religion. Religion has the ability to amplify the desire to be understood, but nearly nullifies the desire to understand others who are not like-minded. Religion retards intellectual growth, represses individual thought, is the adversary of science, the restraint against invention and the stalwart of what would otherwise advance our species into a peaceful existence, without want.
The Incredible Shrinking Apology…
Every day the pool of apologetics gets smaller while the ocean of evidence that counters religious doctrine, dogma and superstition grows deeper. Every day, by default, the fundamentally religious become more willfully ignorant.
Progress…
The voices of reason are getting louder, more prevalent and numerous. We are making slow and steady inroads into areas of our existence that, fifty years ago, would have seemed impossible.
Mightier Than The Sword…
But we will prevail, because if evolution has taught us anything, the desire to explore new ideas and learn new ways of doing things is almost unavoidable. From the time some of our ancestors started to write things down, other ancestors carried those words abroad, bringing new ideas and instructions for new technologies with them.
These People Can Vote and Reproduce!
Conservatism [Reactionism] Thrives on Low Intelligence and Poor Information
. . . It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.
It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly “different” others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking. . .
Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to “rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order” and “emphasise the maintenance of the status quo”. Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write. . .
. . . [Former Republican ideologue], Mike Lofgren complains that “the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today“. The Republican party, with its “prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science” is appealing to what he calls the “low-information voter”, or the “misinformation voter”. While most office holders probably don’t believe the “reactionary and paranoid claptrap” they peddle, “they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base”.
Honoring Darwin Day
On February 12 we’ll commemorate the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a celebration around the world known as Darwin Day, to appreciate the advancement of human knowledge and the achievements of science and reason. It must also be a day when we push back against the politicization and undermining of science by ideologues and zealots. . .
Unfortunately, too many politicians are gripped by an anti-science fervor. . .
Last year, [Representative Pete Stark (D-CA) California’s 13th district and the only self-described non-theist in Congress] introduced a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to designate February 12 as Darwin Day in recognition of Charles Darwin as a worthy symbol of the achievements and importance of reason, science, and the advancement of human knowledge.
Always Question Authority 