[MD] New Model Army, Mystic(DQ) Experience, and Religion (SQ) as Power

[ian glendinning]

Doing just fine DMB, no splinters likely... since recognizing excluded
middles has nothing to do with sitting on any fences, picket or
otherwise.

I have no doubt about my commitment to atheism ... everywhere in the
real world ... how dare you suggest otherwise. It just doesn't stop me
wanting to understand what a theist is saying. (My guard drops only in
the metaphysical core, where any metaphor will do, even flying
spaghetti monsters.)

Eagleton is tilting at windmills for his own political agendas (I'd
guess). How can anyone be so crass as to suggest anyone would posit no
significant difference between democracy and fascism, between religion
and science. Doh !

I have recommended Mary Parker-Follett to you "Just so far as people
think that the basis of working together is compromise and concession,
just so far do they not understand the first principles."

Ian

On 9/18/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Ian said to David M:
> OK, so the point at which natural science breaks down is in the existence of
> anything at all ... as a given, a gift from God. That's the "hole" in any
> metaphysics that cannot be viewed from the other
> side, no one (with any sense) can presume to make strong argument for or
> against anything in that hole. A theistic metaphor is as good as any, in
> that context, even a sentient, intentional being. ...Other holes are merely
> circumstantial and any god vs science debate in these cases is meaningless.
>
> dmb says:
> Speaking of holes, as you know by now, this way of playing things down the
> middle really bugs me. And thanks to my professor's current reading
> assignment I can be a little more specific about why it bugs me. I just
> finished reading the first part of Terry Eagleton's LITERARY THEORY, where
> he explains American New Criticism as "a full-blooded irrationalism", "one
> closely associated with religious dogma... and the right-wing 'blood and
> soil' politics of the Agrarian movement" (49). Terry Eagleton, by the way,
> is known as "the high priest of crit lit" and is considered to be an
> academic superstar. As he explains it, this reactionary critics developed a
> way of reading that "displays an extraordinary lack of interest in what
> lierary works actually say" (51). This school of criticism was founded on
> the belief that middle-class liberalism was to be "ousted" and replaced with
> "an extreme right-wing authoritarianism" (39). I was shocked to learn that
> this is exactly what T.S. Eliot was up to. And their approach to the
> examination of written works was a lot like yours, Ian. As Eagleton puts it,
> "the New Critical way meant committing yourself to nothing" (50), so that
> McCarthyism and Civil Libertarians are construed to be "complimentary
> opposites" and served as "a recipe for political inertia and thus for
> submission to the status quo" (50).
>
> And that's pretty much what I see in your constant equivocations on the
> conflict between science and religion, Ian. I see an unwillingness to commit
> yourself to either side. Rather than being fair-minded or accomodating, I
> see this as a kind of grotesque even-handedness where hateful
> anti-intellecutalism is given the same value as rational, empirically based
> beliefs. And as Eagleton points out, this is less than unhelpful. I think
> that we ought not pretend that there are no important differences between
> fascism and democracy, between religion and science, between myth and
> history, etc., etc.,. I don't think anyone needs to engage in simplistic,
> black and white thinking in order to make distinctions or to pick sides. It
> only takes the willingness and ability to make some basic distinctions, not
> least of all the distinction between what's good and bad, or at least better
> than worse, in the way of beliefs. You know, because some things are better
> than others.
>
> Please get off the fence before you get a white pickett up your ass, eh?
> That's one hole you'll probably never want to fill, at least not with a
> pointed wooden spike.
>
> Hope you're splinter-free and otherwise well,
> dmb
>
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