Salman Rushdie, you rock my world.

[goteam]

"Intelligent design, an idea designed backward so as to force the antique idea of a Creator upon the beauty of creation, is so thoroughly rooted in pseudoscience, so full of false logic, so easy to attack that a little rudeness seems called for."

Kick ass. Hopefully this entry about this article and my post to del.icio.us will remind me to buy

Comments

[goteam]

I liked the point that science can be accepting of religion only if religion is also accepting of science, and that as long as either side has extremists, the other side will too. Either way, you probably want to be on the side playing shirts, because you're gonna need a suit of armor, and that could get pretty chafey on bare flesh.

[leech]

I think he's going a little too far with this:

It is among the truths believed to be self-evident by the followers of all religions that godlessness is equivalent to amorality and that ethics requires the underpinning presence of some sort of ultimate arbiter, some sort of supernatural absolute, without which secularism, humanism, relativism, hedonism, liberalism and all manner of permissive improprieties will inevitably seduce the unbeliever down immoral ways.

That's not quite true. Unless by "followers of all religions" he means "some followers of most religions". (Or, most likely, "dogmatic followers of Abramic religions".)

[iainuki]

He stretched it, but this particular condition afflicts Hinduism too (or, at least, some Hindus). Considering that something like two-thirds of humans in the world embrace Abrahamic religions and Hinduism (http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html), I don't think he's exaggerating too far.

More to the point is that organized religions tend to be controlled by individuals of the aforesaid persuasion, which means that they often wield influence disproportionate to their numbers. This effect is redoubled because religious individuals inclined to play politics are even more likely to have these characteristics.

I agree he's not being fair, but I can see where he's coming from.

[goteam]

I think a main point to take away from the piece is that nobody fights fair in this argument, and so even attempts to pretend to do so are pretty much doomed. But perhaps that's just my cynicism talking, or the fact that I really should be sleeping.