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

[David M]

So Mr DMB

Is DQ rational?

Eagleton. Em?!  He means well, but with your brains, you'll soon get over 
him.

David M

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 1:11 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] New Model Army, Mystic(DQ) Experience,and Religion (SQ) as 
Power


> 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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