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"Faith of the Free"
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uufreespirit
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
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 Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:28 pm Post subject: "I Don't Believe in Atheists" (new Hedges book) |
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"The only reason I go after Christian fundamentalists and New Atheists is because they're here and I'm an American. Fundamentalism -- whether it's Hindu fundamentalism or Jewish fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism or Islamic fundamentalism -- is the same disease. Karen Armstrong has explained that brilliantly. Fundamentalists, no matter what their religious coloring -- bear far more in common with each other than they do with more enlightened members of their own religious communities. I'm an enemy of fundamentalism, period. And if I'm not going after Islamic fundamentalism in this book, it's because what I've tried to do is talk about these two very dangerous ideological strains within American society, although the New Atheists are peddling this under the guise of enlightenment and reason and science in the same way that the Christian right tries to peddle it as a form of Christianity..."
-- Christopher Hedges |
-- Chris Hedges has another book out: This time he takes aim at another form of fundamentalism...that of the atheistic sort. The book responds to other authors who have recently taken a more hard-line atheistic position in their sharp criticism of dogmatic, authoritarian "right-wing" religion. Sounds like an interesting book--and, yes, I agree with much of what he suggests in the following Salon.com interview;
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/13/chris_hedges/index.html?source=search&aim=/books/int
-- Like Unitarian Universalism, the main complaint Hedges has (apparently...I haven't read it yet), is not with specific belief but with certain attitudes that undergird them. Like Unitarian minister Powell Davies, Chris sees a strong similarity between the closed-minded arrogance of fundamentalistic atheism and the various dogmatic forms of religious belief. Behind them all are common currents, such as a lack of humility and a pretense of knowing what is ultimately unknowable. Science, as Hedges suggests, becomes rigid and cult-like rather than a free and open discipline or methodology--a tool for the filtering and assessment of truth. Also common to all of them is an inability to enter into meaningful conversation with one another... something that this world maybe could use a little more of, don't you think?
Ron
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-- Ron
"Freedom depends on free thinkers." --- Dan Barker
"The Reformation Must Continue!" --- Friedrich Schleiermacher
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