Posted on 10/08/2005 5:29:47 AM PDT by Crackingham
Citizens of the world should be concerned about religious extremism whether it’s in Iran or America, says author Salman Rushdie, who was once marked for death by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
Rushdie compared the emergence of religion into public life in Kansas with similar movements across the world in a lecture Thursday at the Lied Center.
“I would really love never to mention that word again: religion,” Rushdie said. “But now it seems to be coming right at us all. I don’t just mean radical Islam, by the way. I believe we have some problems right here.”
Rushdie received a standing ovation after the lecture, in which he revealed his thoughts on writing and receiving death threats and also blasted religion, intelligent design and the best-selling book “The Da Vinci Code.”
SNIP
Rushdie told the crowd that religion has much potential to do harm in the world today.
“It’s a pretty bad time for us who don’t believe that superstition should rule the world,” he said.
When asked how rationalism could win the fight against religion, Rushdie said with ridicule, argument and battle. When he was young, the 58-year-old said, he and others thought they’d won the battle. So they turned their heads.
We were “so busy having fun that all the uncool people took over the world,” he said.
And this superstition needs to be pushed back in the cupboard where it belongs, he said. Rushdie also blasted intelligent design proponents.
“I never had any doubts about evolution theory,” he said. “I gather there are parts of Kansas where the big bang did not take place.”
I agree that suggestions here that the Muslims were right in wanting to kill Rushdie were outrageous and wrong. However, unless he's clairvoyant, he wasn't referring to those suggestions in his speech.
He knows the score. He's well aware that an attack on Islam is a Political Correctness no-no. It's okay to attack Christianity, and it's okay to attack religion in general, but specific criticism of a religion other than Christianity is PC heresy. So even though a bounty was put on his head by certain Islamists, he felt the need to broadly attack religion in general, with ludicrous allusions to Kansas. it was totally unfounded and ridiculous. It was the equivalent of an American going to a town in Asia where devout Buddhists have some political clout and comparing it to Muslims flying planes into the twin towers.
He's just another arrogant secularist trying to rig the debate to keep his rivals from presenting their case, in order to shield his own taboos and superstitions from what he sees as heresy.
Incidentally, while I deplore even joking about killing anyone, I doubt very seriously if any of the posters in this thread actually think Rushdie should be killed. I have no doubt, though, that Rushdie would make it illegal for Christians to hold office or vote if he had the power to do so.
If you consider only this article that's a plausible interpretation. Other posters have concluded that he's like certain religious types who characterize all athiests as evil, etc.
I find that unlikely. Rushdie is a learned and subtle man. Certainly he would be aware that Einstein rejected quantum theory with the comment "God does not play dice". Certainly he would be aware that there are evolutionary scientists who are also religious. Certainly he would have met very smart and very fine believers.
I don't know how this plays out in his mind.
Trouble is most libs get confused with facts.
Hope your day is great.
Here Rushdie states his position clearly.
He is a secularist, no doubt about it. But he objects to religions in the public sphere because he feels they've failed to answer the two fundamental questions on which they claim special knowledge - where we came from and how we should live - and always react to criticism with intolerance which becomes tyranny when backed by law.
These are large questions which have done troubling mankind for eons. I would guess that Rushdie's position is evolving in response to argument and discussion.
Blasphemy! Salman Rushdie and Freedom of Expression
John le Carré, Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens Exchange Biting Letters
Anybody can use a stamp of Christian, doesn't make it a truth.
"Krutz, though, does not believe the attendance has made a huge impact in private morality, public morality, or concern for peace and justice."
These words come from the site you posted.
The significance of Christianity is the ability for every human to have a relationship with God. Without that opportunity a human will remain dead in the spirit.
With respect to religion, insofar as any system of thinking avoids God and promotes selfish or even worldly good, that system is also short the Christian way of life. Many problems arise with western secular thought when it lumps Christianity in with 'religion'. The most obvious is that proposed by Salmaan Rushdie when he ignores the opportunity to have a relationship with God when he identifies human good based religions and their extreme consequences with anything spiritual.
The 'negative problems' associated with Christianity generally are a consequence of antiChristian thinking and behavior amongst some who allege their 'Christianity'. Those negative aspects are generally worldly thinking and its impact upon religious institutions from within the institution. Worldly thinking, though, is not the mind of Christ, nor the Christian way of life.
I suspect Rushdie is merely confusing worldly thinking within religious institutions with fundamentalism, then categorizing fundamentalism as evil.
I also suspect he doesn't know what the meaning of a spirit being born implies. At least, I havn't observed any work of the spirit manifest in his works.
And this superstition needs to be pushed back in the cupboard where it belongs, he said. Rushdie also blasted intelligent design proponents.
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
> I agree that suggestions here that the Muslims were right in wanting to kill Rushdie were outrageous and wrong. However, unless he's clairvoyant, he wasn't referring to those suggestions in his speech.
What, you think these woudl be the first time such views have been expressed about him? He's been anti-superstition, and publicly so, for a long, long time.
> he felt the need to broadly attack religion in general
And why not? If somethign is silly, it's silly... even if one specific aspect of it is *extremely* silly.
> I have no doubt, though, that Rushdie would make it illegal for Christians to hold office or vote if he had the power to do so.
Based on what?
"Do not hide your light under a bushel basket."
####Based on what?#####
His own statements about driving superstition into the cupboard where it belongs. You can combine that with the behavior of societies that are further down the road toward secularism than we are (Europe & Canada), as well as the behavior of the secularist Democrats in the Senate.
Secularism of the Rushdie variety tends to create some pretty goofy and dysfunctional societies. Chesterton was right when he said people who stop believing in God don't believe in nothing...they believe in anything. This idea that secularists are particularly tolerant (they aren't) or uniquely rational (they most certainly aren't) is one of the most nonsensical fairy tales of our era.
I recall reading an article a few years ago on a referendum in Ireland on abortion. The pro-life side won. The writer of the article (pro-abortion, as are most journalists) blamed the pro-life victory on rural voters, whom he described as being under the influence of the Catholic Church. He noted that some precincts in the city of Dublin voted pro-abortion, since the "educated" city voters were less under church influence.
Of course, it never occurred to the journalist that those city voters were being influenced by something else. His attitude was that they were rational, free-thinking, independent minds who just coincidentally all came to the same conclusion that abortion should be legal. Of course that's nonsense. They were influenced by the liberal media, the liberal academic community, and even fashion magazines to vote the way they did.
Secularists aren't free thinkers, they're just influenced by things other than Christianity. This is why they usually end up all coming to the same conclusion. Anyone can easily see the herding or hiving behavior that Lawrence Auster has described as occurring among the secularist forces. It's the source of Political Correctness and some of the more preposterous views expounded today, particularly in more secularized parts of the world:
Gender doesn't exist, it's a sociological construction.
Homosexuality is just as normal as heterosexuality.
A new human life begins at birth, not conception.
-----
Only a secularized society would be "rational" enough to believe such ludicrous, and even unscientific, bilge.
Europe was once the heart of Christendom. As long as it was that, it could hold back Islam. But how can a secularized Europe do so? Secularism creates dysfunctional societies where living for the moment becomes paramount. The order of the day becomes reordering society to make it more "equal", less "unfair". Fighting "sexism" and "homophobia" becomes more important than bigoted concerns like guarding the border or preserving the culture. New taboos (tradition, homophobia, heterosexism), new superstitions (equality, atheism), and new priests (media figures, academic figures, political figures) replace the old. Only unlike the old, they aren't tested by time. They have no track record of success. One of the reasons liberal secularists call themselves "progressive" is because they've never succeeded in creating a single civilization. They hijack others and declare the values that created the civilization in the first place to be archaic and superstitious.
So with European Christianity dead, who can stand against Islam? Without a strong and functional Christianity, Europe has two options: Become Islamic or suppress all religion as the old Soviet Union once did.
In truth, secularism is just another faith. Instead of faith that there's something beyond man, it's faith that there's nothing beyond man. Chesterton was right.
> ####Based on what?#####
> His own statements about driving superstition into the cupboard where it belongs.
Your error here has been explained to you.
The rest of your broad-brush irrelevant and inaccurate generalizations snipped.
Thanks for the discussion. People are free to agree or disagree with me, as always.
As generalizations go this is not bad. However, I would argue that secularism is better at promoting free thinking - independent thought - than religion.
This idea that secularists are particularly tolerant (they aren't) or uniquely rational (they most certainly aren't) is one of the most nonsensical fairy tales of our era.
Secularism doesn't rid humanity of its failing and certainly doesn't transform fools and cowards into wise men and heroes. But promoting free speech and free thought is better than the opposite.
Europe was once the heart of Christendom. As long as it was that, it could hold back Islam. But how can a secularized Europe do so? Secularism creates dysfunctional societies where living for the moment becomes paramount. The order of the day becomes reordering society to make it more "equal", less "unfair". Fighting "sexism" and "homophobia" becomes more important than bigoted concerns like guarding the border or preserving the culture.
A fantasized view of history. Religious societies have a terrible track record...and modern European society is doing quite well at holding back Islam...by transforming it. If you view American society as European (and it is) we're also doing a terrific job of conquering Islam militarily.
> A fantasized view of history.
Indeed. How did the Europeans hold back Islamic conquest? Well, one time, it was by magically causing the Mongols to invade Islamdom and trash the place. Another time it was by putting Dracula on the border and scaring the bejeebers out of the Turks by filling fields with impaled bodies. Neither of these is either replicable or particularly "Christian." And another time it was be sneakily allowing the Muslims to actually conquer much of western Europe and hold it for a few centuries...
You do realize that freedom of speech arose in the West during an era you would no doubt describe as dominated by religious fanaticism.
Who is it that's passing speech codes? Christians or secularists? Who carried out the inquisition against Harvard's president over his innocent comments about gender? Not Christians. Who is passing laws to criminalize public or written disapproval of homosexuality? Sweden & Canada are. Are Sweden & Canada more or less secularized than America?
Check out the death stats from the last century, the most secular in history.
Religion can create repressive regimes, but doesn't always do so. No sooner do secularists take over, however, than they immediately head in the direction of repression.
Yes. So? The lesson I draw from that is Europeans learned how to transcend theocracy. I suppose you draw the opposite conclusion?
Who is it that's passing speech codes? Christians or secularists?
And so? Secularists are also human...meaning power corrupts and weakness rules.
Check out the death stats from the last century, the most secular in history.
The same...with the caveat that the religious exagerate and distort these stats for their own purposes.
Religion can create repressive regimes, but doesn't always do so. No sooner do secularists take over, however, than they immediately head in the direction of repression.
A perfect example of what I'm talking about. Religious societies - especially monotheistic religious societies - have a terrible record of repression. Democratic capitalist societies - very secular - have a terrific record of tolerance. You, however, prefer to see exactly the opposite.
It's no coincidence that America, the most religious of the Western nations, is the land most defensive of free speech. I'm sure you wouldn't want to turn the internet over to the secular United Nations.
Think about it. Does anyone ever talk about moving to secularized Canada or Sweden or France because they have a greater tolerance of free speech there? No, they talk about moving there because the welfare checks (paid for by confiscatory taxes on others) are fatter, or because those countries don't bother much with fighting Islam, or because they have cradle to grave socialized medicine, or because they're a "gun free" environment (meaning law abiding citizens have a harder time getting guns), or because they have tougher "hate speech" laws.
That may seem contradictory but it is reality.
Will it survive? There's good reason to fear the stupidity of politically correct secularists but I think it will. We are so strong and vibrant and so capable of absorbing good things and good people from other cultures that it is hard to see how we could fail.
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