[ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook

[Lee Corbin]

Russell writes

> As I said earlier, I am not defending the idea that all the events
> described in the Bible and other religious texts should be regarded
> as having literally occured; the way I got into this discussion was
> noticing you making the quite stunning remark that you favored
> fundamentalism of all sides over rational moderation. 

Egads!  Can hardly believe I would have said such a thing.
Never mind. I repudiate it. Perhaps you think that modern
liberal theology is "rational moderation". It's not.  It's a 
*retreat* from rationalism to commitment, as explained
in Bartley's book---"The Retreat To Commitment"---which
is (or should be), the bible of Pan Critical Rationalism.
(Sorry for the word choice   :-)

> > Yes and no.  I concur that the west has perhaps committed suicide
> > by abadoning its religion. But the source of its strength---open inquiry 
> > also perhaps laid the seeds of its ruin.
> 
> Open inquiry is a freedom. It's up to us what use we make of it.
> If we use it to destroy the basis of continued life, well then it wil
> cease to exist when we do. But we have free will; we can choose
> otherwise. 

Well, if by "we" you mean the entire collective consciousness of the
West, or *all* the people living there.  That cannot happen.  As you
say (or implied, at least) the people appear to need something 
beyond mere rationality.  By losing faith in God, and having failed
to be able to replace it with anything that causes (1) large families,
(2) high confidence in ourselves and our institutions, and (3) tighter
moral precepts and higher abhorence of vulgarity and coarseness,
indeed the West may be doomed. Heaven knows that only the
Singularity can save us, to mix a mess of metaphors.

The Americans passed up (1) by refusing either to go along with Brigham
Young's great ideas, and by not taking Galton seriously enough. And
about (2)?  How did we lose (2)?  The Marxists and anthropologists
like Boas and his followers mainly did the trick, and they also took
down (3) while they were at it.  Or, it may be that there is a natural
cycle to these things, and if they hadn't done it, the society would have
lost its asabiya (or social capital) some other way.

> > ...that is too bad.
>
> Perhaps, but I haven't given up on the survival of our values and the
> civilization that supports them, however slim the odds may be. 

Good man.

> And the truth is that a) you cannot either prove or disprove the
> existence of God and b) the real motive driving fanatical atheism
> derives from precisely the same evolutionary psychology as the
> motive driving fanatical religion. A dispassionate quest for the
> truth would eschew both. 

Nah.  You can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the
Tooth Fairy either. But I'll let Stathis continue---he's on a roll.

Lee