1. Enemies of Reason

Comment #65106 by LauraD on August 22, 2007 at 11:08 pm

I'm only through about 16 minutes of the first show but it's almost too painful to watch. Not Richard of course, but the way these charlatans blather on and on as if what they're saying has any basis in truth or reality. It's kind of like watching Bush speak where you spend the entire time cringing inside and wanting to hurl something at the screen.

Thanks for the links, I've been wanting to watch the show but I live in the US and had little hope it would ever get aired here.

2. A Designer Universe?

Comment #61350 by LauraD on August 4, 2007 at 11:06 pm

But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others—for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan—also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion.

As a student at UT getting a History degree, I love that Dr. Weinberg took on the popular theory that christianity spurred the anti-slavery movement. I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard this argument and it drives me bananas. It's like saying christianity stopped human sacrifices in South America without taking into account the slaughter of millions of indigenous peoples and the horror of the Inquisition.

Unfortunately history is written by the winners and in the US we are almost brainwashed throughout primary and secondary school to believe that the spread of western civilization and christianity throughout the "new world" was benevolent and justified. It takes a college education to move past the indoctrination of "might equals right" and even then many students don't absorb the important lessons offered by history, they merely see it as a required class they have to take in order to graduate.

Sill, I love that I am attending a University that hires professors like Weinberg and though I will never take one of his classes, science fascinates but confuses me to no end, I am thankful for the experience and knowledge he, and others like him, bring to UT.

Hook 'Em Horns