After the Future

Fear and Desire; Grace and Freedom

Last week I quoted Jackson Lear's Nation article about how new atheists like Sam Harris aren't just reductionist in their rejection of religion, but their embrace of an aggressive ideological positivism can be just as dangerous as any fanaticism that comes from the right.  Right-wing ideologues are more in the news these days, but I think an argument can be made that the Harrises and Kurzweils of the world are wittingly or unwittingly working for an alternative, transhuman future that is more ominous than anything envisioned in the feverish imaginations on the Right.

Atheists get things mixed up when they blame religion when the real problem is an unbalanced ideology, whether secular or religious in its style. Religious wars were the cause of absurd levels of violence and destruction in 17th century Europe, but the most massively destructive violence in Europe's recent history has been motivated by secular ideologies like Fascism and Communism. Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's purges were not motivated by religious zeal. Religious attitudes and behaviors can be a  part of an ideology, but insofar as a religion has a genuine faith dimension to it, that part of it cannot be contained within any ideology, and it usually works at cross purposes with fanatical ideological agendas.

Quote of the Day: Jackson Lears

These high-minded questions conceal a frightening Olympian agenda. Harris is really a social engineer, with a thirst for power that sits uneasily alongside his allegedly disinterested pursuit of moral truth. We must use science, he says, to figure out why people do silly and harmful things in the name of morality, what kinds of things they should do instead and how to make them abandon their silly and harmful practices in order “to live better lives.” Harris’s engineering mission envelops human life as a whole. “Given recent developments in biology, we are now poised to consciously engineer our further evolution,” he writes. “Should we do this, and if so, in which ways? Only a scientific understanding of the possibilities of human well-being could guide us.” Harris counsels that those wary of the arrogance, and the potential dangers, of the desire to perfect the biological evolution of the species should observe the behavior of scientists at their professional meetings: “arrogance is about as common at a scientific conference as nudity.” Scientists, in Harris’s telling, are the saints of circumspection.  Jackson Lears

Very interesting article in The Nation about the dangerous reductionism of the new positivists like Harris.  The problem isn't what they are against; it's what they are for. The whole article is worth a read.

Obama kills Osama on Mission Accomplished Day

Ten years, two wars, and tens of thousands dead--it was all worth it, right?  Symbolic deaths of mad men like Osama are worth something, but the price paid was way too high. Criminally too high. So excuse me for not getting on the party bus.

Now what?  Does anything actually change?