p247

The Bible fundamentalism

The Bible fundamentalism makes a mistake of relying only on language. Even God cannot express his wisdom in terms of incomplete human languages (if one assumed He could, it is just to underestimate His wisdom), so if one relies only on the Bible (or any written document), s/he can never understand what He wishes to imply. It is said that Galileo wrote to one of his friends just before the second trial in 1633 why we had to start with the Bible without starting with His own work = universe. 

Logos-Davar and the intrinsic evilness of religions 

After all, the reader may have realized that slighting natural intelligence, overestimation of language, monotheistic world view, neglecting the complexity of the world , etc., all share the same root. A sizable portion of human misfortune seems to come from this root.

Joel Klein’s article in TIME December 8, 2008 (p27) on G. W. Bush entitled “The Lamest Duck. Bush's disappearing act during the economic crisis is a fitting coda to a failed presidency’’ criticizes the (intellectual and ethical arrogance called) fundamentalistic simplification of our world. The whole piece is worth perusing. It concludes as follows:

This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles---overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence. ---skipped----

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or care about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or care about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one. 

[Incidentally, R. Dawkins,  God Delusion , quoted below says

The born-again George W. Bush is typical of today’s religious ascendancy. He, and they are stalwart defenders of human life, as long as it is embryonic life (or terminally ill life) ― even to the point of preventing medical research that would certainly save many lives. ]

To try to explain the world in terms of the track laid down by God + self-organization is, as criticized in the above quotation, a kind of intellectual laziness. 

However, the above article contains misunderstanding (or overestimation) of religion in general. With proper skepticism monotheism cannot stay unscathed. We tend to believe that although fundamentalism and fanaticism are bad, (monotheistic) religions themselves are OK. However, this is due to misunderstanding of monotheism. Good believers can be found simply because they are moderate believers:

* All things exist, not for their own sake, but for the sake of man. He who, like the pious Christian naturalists, pronounces this to be pride, declares Christianity itself to be pride; for to say that the material world exists for the sake of man, implies infinitely less than to say that God – or at least, if we follow Paul, a being who is almost God, scarcely to be distinguished from God – becomes man for the sake of men . [Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity Chapter X]

* And all these contradictions of Nature happen for the welfare of Israel, purely at the command of Jehovah, who tro ubles himself about nothing but Israel, who is nothing but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish people, to the exclusion of all other nations, ? absolute intolerance, the secret essence of monotheism. [Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity Chapter XI]

* What is done is done not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent; whatever God co mmands is right. If these commands are in accordance with reason, with ethics, it is well; but so far as the idea of revelation is concerned, it is accidental. [Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity Chapter XXI]

* but the necessary consequence of a faith in which an historical book, necessarily subject to all the conditions of a temporal, finite production, is regarded as an eternal, absolute, universally authoritative word, is – superstition and sophistry. [Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity Chapter XXI]

“ Europe has a modern beautiful idea of ‘liberty and equality,’ and the idea must be applicable universally in principle . Euro peans intuitively feel that this is not applicable to Muslims, but they do not express it explicitly, because if they did, they were discriminating and regarded intolerant.

 ---skipped---

I often feel, irrespective of their good feeling or not toward Muslims, they regard that Muslims do not share a kind of fundamental ethic with themselves. In the world where humanism is taken for granted, as a human being one cannot level with the people who believe that the absolute rule is given by God from outside of humanity, and who construct every logic and ethic on it.” [N Shiono and M Ikeuti, “What is the implication of the demise of `Pax Romana’?” Nami 2009/1, p5 Ikeuti’s statement.]

R. Dawkins,  God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Company 2006) (excerpts: GodDel.pdf password = GodDel p306 contains the most important message of the book (one might succinctly summarize that the freedom of religion is an enemy of humankind):

The take home message is that  we should blame religion itself , not religious extremism

― as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire

got it right long ago: ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ So did Bertrand Russel: ‘Many people would sooner die than think. in fact, they do.’ 

 As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers.

And we must reject an evil idea that believing is good:

More generally (and this applies to Christianity no less than to Islam), what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith itself is a virtue.  Faith is an evil

precisely because it requires no justification  and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them ― given certain other ingredients that are not hard to come by ― to grow up into potentially lethal weapon for future jihads or crusades.

Weinberg said, according to the quotation in God Delusion :

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

Holy priest of Myoe of Toganoo (1173-1232) said: no belief is needed for a righteous person: “ I n supplication for oneself, man need not read even a single scroll of sutras nor commit even a single act of worship; he need be righteous in mind and body andbehave only as man was meant to behave to receive the protection of any god, buddha, or divine being. Rather than over-complicate matters, man need do nothing but simply be moral. ” (translated by S Oono)

Logos 

After the author gave a talk related to this in 1990), Prof Vulpiani pointed out that in Greek language ‘word’ is  logos and it also implies reason. This clearly indicates serious misunderstanding of rationality.

 Plato said that the conversation without voice within our soul was called thinking, so he insisted on the format of dialogues to write his philosophy books. Here is a typical humanistic fallacy about natural intelligence. 

 According to the Iwanami Philosophy Dictionary, etymologically  logos came from the verb  legein implying gather or collect, that is, to compile scattered facts according to order and reason. Consequently, it came to imply reason, cause, explanation, order, meaning, etc. In their core is language (so they thought), so  logos has also come to imply language. That is, even etymologically, it was due to a fundamental misunderstanding of human beings.

Critique of Polannyi