Secularism continued

Excellent article by Nick Cohen in The Guardian to support my previous post. The following sums it up nicely:

Do I need to remind you that insulting the gods, the pope or the synagogue were the charges the faithful levelled against Socrates, Galileo and Spinoza? Or that insulting religion is everywhere the favourite charge of fanatics?

Sadly, what is happening at the moment makes me wonder whether we haven't been overestimating the extent to which the mentality of the West has actually been shaped by spirit of these (and other) thinkers. The whole debate post-Charlie Hebdo has confirmed a nagging hunch of mine, namely that the secularisation of the West has never been as complete and all-encompassing as some of us seem to have believed. Most people have not understood what secularism means or fully embraced the values that this term denotes, or abandoned latent beliefs in the Christian roots of our ways of thinking, morality and sense of justice. How many of my friends and colleagues whom I had thought to be intelligent rationalists have puzzled me with abrupt und unmotivated references to the Sermon on the Mount as the dominant precept of Western Thought (well, the "liberal" Pontifex's recent endorsement of the principle of honour and lex talionis should have vaporised that fallacy) or even described the Ten Commandments as the basis of our justice system.

This means, in turn, that these are not "post-secular times", nor that religion is "returning". At this very moment I'm actually wondering whether we might not still be in a pre-secular stage of history and that this is a crucial moment for us to prove that we want to - and are able to - live in world that is as free as possible from ignorance, prejudice and fanaticism as it can be.

An exercise in interfaith dialogue

From an article in yesterday's Guardian:

"May you burn in hell!" one of the men shouted at Westergaard.

"Can we talk about it?" the cartoonist asked.

"May you burn in hell," the man repeated.

"Well, I guess we'll have to talk about it in hell, then," Westergaard finally said.

And more on this topic.

Peaches Geldof ...

... Just 4 ur info.

L. Ron Hubbard and J.G. Ballard do not got together. A "total sci-fi nut" like you ought to know that.

But it seems you don't.

Similarly, a reading diet of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins seems a curious (to put it politely) inspiration to "spirituality" and a "religious path". Let alone to thetan-status.

Exhibit C (ohne Worte):

Ms Geldof falling onto the religious path.

More from the recent Scientology meme: here and here.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh is free

In probably the most pleasant message I've yet received via Facebook, I (along with many other people) heard via Ophelia that Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (about whom we have previously posted) has been freed.

Although 'free' is, I suppose relative: he's currently 'in hiding', and, as an Independent article notes:

Prior to his departure, he spoke of how his relief was mixed with deep regret at knowing he was unlikely to see his family or country again.

Still, considering he was first sentenced to death and then had his sentence commuted to a lengthy term of imprisonment, this is, of course, good news.

Wherever you are, Mr. Kambaksh, we wish you well. And hope that you may one day return to a free Afghanistan.

On hegemony

Now there's someone who's learnt his poststructuralist lesson!

He'd have a field day with some of my subversive, hegemony-averse colleagues. Thesis topic: "Rethinking waterboarding through Foucault."

R.I.P. Nicholas Hughes

Of course I'm aware that - on this splendiferously sunny Easter Sunday, on which I succumbed (tut-tut) to the temptation to plant the tomatoes before the sacrosanct "Frost Saint" watershed (the cold snap that sometimes strikes in May, destroying the crop of all too optimistic gardeners) - you're all already slobbering to read a devastating deconstruction of the Easter message by clanger-dropping Mr. Godastic Walter Mixa (aka the Bishop of Augsburg) .

Well, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a day or so to get our take on "agressive atheistm" (though I can promise you that something substantial - involving hard historical data and quotes by Richard Evans and the likes - is brewing). These here avowed atheists are too busy having a peaceful and sunny spring holiday. I guess you could call that "practising atheism".

In the meantime, here's a belated tribute to Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, who committed suicide on 16 March this year. The New York Times has a particularly evocative article about what seems to have been a lovely man:

[Nicholas Hughes] was possessed with an utter distaste for academic politics and a special gift for finding simple solutions to complex scientific problems, which he then translated into clear, clean prose for the most important publications in his field.

Well, that's one thing we have in common (guess which of the three it is), and two that I'm aspiring to. Given these dislikes and passions, it is hardly surprising that Hughes found life in a world of empty verbiage, professional obsfuscation and territorial megalomania too difficult to bear. I hope he's found peace.

And just to round off my commemoration, here's the poem that Plath wrote about him:

Sylvia Plath, "Nick and the Candlestick"

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish -
Christ! they are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs -

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

Related Matters

On the day that Anglican traditionalists, driven not least by their dismay about the increasingly liberal attitudes of their Church vis-à-vis gay clergy and same-sex marriages, found a conservative "church within the church" at a meeting in Jerusalem, nationalist groups in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic stage violent protests against Christopher Street Day parades.

Yes, I am suggesting that a certain structural (and not only that) similarity exists between the anxious representatives of Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference) and the homophobic extremists throwing bottles and eggs in Sofia and Brno.