tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post7038421569156395246..comments2024-03-23T07:33:30.972+00:00Comments on Quodlibeta: Religion and Politics Part TwoJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01594220073836613367noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-13661599503321457332008-01-27T11:39:00.000+00:002008-01-27T11:39:00.000+00:00I like your reference to the Russell Syndrome and ...I like your reference to the Russell Syndrome and one of the related failing of intellectuals: to lose all common sense and think irrationally when they discuss religion. I employ Thomas Sowell's distinction between soft-science intellectuals and hard-science intellectuals-the latter make useful contributions to society--as you indicate in your book on medieval scientists that helped advance Western civilization. However, soft science intellectuals--like Dawkins, Chomski and Hitchins-- do great harm. Curiously, such geniuses demand absolute scientific rigor (and demonstrated proofs!) on religious matters but often make the great leap of Faith into the arms, say, of a Joe Stalin, when it comes to secular matters. They have it backwards! On secular matters one must be hard-headed, scientific, and demand positive results, but in religious matters it is quite reasonable and safe to enjoy optimism and hope and faith in whatever denomination that comforts and sustains your spirit. Those suffering from Russell's Syndrome have done great harm by placing their faith and hopes in the socialist and utopian dreams that killed millions of innocent people on the Continent during the past 100 years. Kurt Vonnegut explains in "Galapogus" (sp?) that the end of the world occurred simply because man's brains became too big to think clearly. The intelligentsias couldn't help it, he says, it was just that their thinking became too abstrat to function effectively. Like Vonnegut, I believe that Russell's Syndrome goes well beyond religious matters and infects much of governmental policy today. Soft-scientists as a group share this malaise and in the halls of academia are teaching destructive social and political ideas that are undermining Western traditional modes of economic success. That success was built before Russell's style of abstractions became common--In my book COMMON GENIUS I point to the great strides of medieval science from the 11th century on that helped create Western supremacy--This was a time before soft-science philosophers emerged--Centuries later, the Hegels and Nietszches and other "enlightenment" philosophers all contracted an early form of Russell's "mental illness" that led to the horrors of the Twentieth Century. It is telling that the abstractions of Nazism, Communism, and Maoism--the last century's three major killers of innocent people--shared the atheistic mind-set that today's intellectuals support in their effots to eradicate religion from their societies. If one is known by the company they keep, history tells us that we should keep a safe distance away from Dawkins and Hitchens.Bill Greenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12919521754283309024noreply@blogger.com