Two letters I enjoyed from last week's New Scientist:
I don't believe it
Roy Sablosky Takoma Park, Maryland, US
The first four letters you printed on the "Beyond belief" conference (9 December 2006, p 24) invoke the "brilliant insight" that atheism is itself a belief. This is rubbish, and New Scientist should not be promulgating it.
An atheist simply does not believe in any gods. By definition, this is not a belief. Just as nakedness is not a way of getting dressed; sleep is not a technique for paying attention; sunlight is not a kind of shade (nor even its opposite): atheism simply means that one has no religious beliefs.
Even to call it "non-belief" is perhaps misleading. After all, when you're feeling comfortable you don't call it "non-pain".
Many believers literally cannot imagine that atheism is possible. But millions of us enjoy it - all day, every day.
From issue 2586 of New Scientist magazine, 13 January 2007, page 19
And
Investigating design
Henry Law Brighton, East Sussex, UK
Creationism is indeed worthy of serious investigation - as an exercise in social anthropology (16 December 2006, p 8). Adherents of Christianity and Judaism are not required to believe in the literal truth of scripture. [BJ: Wonder who he's been talking to? Not charedim, that's for sure.] In order to do so, creationists must first accept that these texts came directly from God, which raises the immediate question of how they came into existence. Were they encapsulated in a rock, perhaps a meteorite? Did they arrive in the form of a celestial email, perhaps via a modem connected to the numinal realm - to the mind of the supreme creator who conjured a material cosmos into being from eternity?
If indeed they imagine they can know the divine mind in this way, then they are claiming an authority which exceeds that which their humanity allows them. Only the numinal can fully comprehend itself; as Saint Paul points out, "we see through a glass darkly".
We must ask, then, why groups of people are taking up such a position, especially in the light of two centuries of philology that has demonstrated the fluidity of language. One reason could be that it espouses a form of totalitarianism. In the light of the last century's examples of totalitarianism, study of the present creationist revival could well be rewarding.
From issue 2586 of New Scientist magazine, 13 January 2007, page 18
|