Rethinking the Idea of 'Christian Europe'. Kenan Malik's essay is awarded
3 Quarks Daily's Top Quark for politics & social science by judge
Stephen M. Walt: "Soldiers in today’s culture wars believe 'European civilization' rests on a set of unchanging principles that are perennially under siege—from godless communism, secular humanism, and most recently, radical Islam. For many of these zealots, what makes the 'West' unique are its Judeo-Christian roots. In this calm and elegantly-written reflection on the past two millenia, Malik shows that Christianity is only one of the many sources of 'Western' culture, and that many of the ideas we now think of as 'bedrock' values were in fact borrowed from other cultures. This essay is a potent antidote to those who believe a 'clash of civilizations' is inevitable—if not already underway—and the moral in Malik’s account could not be clearer. Openness to outside influences has been the true source of European prominence; erecting ramparts against others will impoverish and endanger us all."
posted by homunculus
on Dec 19, 2011 -
87 comments
Sites matching images to pregiven text have been
done before, but the texts are seldom as good as those used at
zweiterblick's sudelbild: the pictures are matched to (randomly selected?) aphorisms of scientist and all-around Enlightened fellow GC Lichtenberg (
about whom more). The relation is sometimes fairly
literal, sometimes fairly
opaque, but it's worth it for the idiosyncratic selection of aphorisms in any case.
posted by kenko
on May 12, 2009 -
7 comments
"What we have here is a
Cabinet of Wonders, a place where things of interest are set out, in possibly bizarre, possibly fetishistic presentation, for perusal by the discerning, who understand that presentation, and scientific interest, are all a form of magic."
[via Neil Gaiman]
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 14, 2007 -
15 comments
The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent
askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)
posted by andrew cooke
on Oct 1, 2004 -
17 comments
Paul Kurtz on the Enlightenment. Unfortunately, there has been a massive retreat from Enlightenment ideals in recent years, a return to pre-modern mythologies. There has been a resurgence of fundamentalist religions
worldwide—Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Judaism. Added to this are occult-paranormal claims, which allegedly transcend the existing scientific paradigm.
In the United States—the preeminent scientific-technological-military superpower in the world—significant numbers of Americans have embraced primitive forms of biblical religion. These focus on salvation, the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Jesus. Evangelical Protestant Christians have made alliances with conservative Roman Catholics and neo-conservative Jews, and they have captured political power—power they have used to oppose secular humanism and naturalism.
via the council for secular humanism
posted by skallas
on Apr 5, 2004 -
75 comments
Vatican Discloses 'Third Secret' of Fatima. Prophecies to shepherd children, conspiracy theories - this shit is old-school. It must be fun to be Catholic, living in a world that still has shadows and mist. I'm sick of this harsh, bright Enlightenment thinking.
posted by lbergstr
on May 14, 2000 -
9 comments
