Religion and Science reference post. The date on this is false. I have moved it a few days into the future so that it stays at the top. So keep scrolling down, there may be new stuff since you last looked.
[Added later: the debate having caught up with the "future", I've now put in a final
CLEARANCE SALE, EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!! timestamp onto this reference post of one minute to midnight (GMT) on Wednesday 1 February. In the broader sense this debate will go on to until either the heat death of the universe or the Last Trump, but this corner of it will take a break at 11.59pm Wednesday. Getting this much mail is intimidating. I feel the need for less weighty thoughts. I shall, however, order
What Is Good? from Amazon - but I'm hoping it mostly says, "Cheesecake."]
Professor Grayling's Times piece from Feb 2004, The Reason of Things.
My post from two days later, criticising it.
My Jan 2006 post containing Prof. Grayling's email that he sent me when a correspondent alerted him to my old post, and my thoughts in reply.
ARC on Gottglaubigers, and Burke's view that the perpetrators of evil use whatever pretext "sells" at that time.
"Massive and systematic falsity" - Prof Grayling's reply, which contains several points I'd like to take up later.
Reader A on question-begging the wrongness of religion as one its evils.
JEM on technology as the unintentional father of moral events (a quotable line!) and the industrial revolution as the cause of slavery's demise.
Reader B says history is everything that ever happened including unrecorded acts of religiously-inspired benevolence or forebearance.
The failure of religion to control evil is the root problem, Randy argues.
Moira Breen says that deleting religion won't debug human nature, and is concerned for my Martian readers.
There are yet more emails waiting in my in-box, but I haven't the time to post them now. Are you guys sure you wouldn't rather discuss Stressful Events in Sewing instead? The world has not yet heard the full truth about my upside-down net curtain.
Yet more added on 30 Jan, and more to come.
Two more from JEM, one answering a possible objection to his views of what ended slavery, and one replying to Reader B.
With only a few hours to go I have added a few more emails, including a big one from ARC. For some computer reason I cannot yet see my most recent posts on the web, even though I know from experience that most of you can. So no permalinks yet. UPDATE: Here is ARC's reply. European slavery had died out for the first time before the industrial revolution was ever thought of, he says.
posted by Natalie at 11:59 PM
