“Is America Too Damn Religious?” (A Debate)

in Religion | March 7th, 2007

GodwetrustIntel­li­gence Squared (iTunes  Feed  Web Site), a new series of NPR broad­casts, has a rather unique
for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (You can get more pre­cise infor­ma­tion on the for­mat here.) There will be eight debates in total, all record­ed live, and each one revolves around three pan­elists argu­ing for, and three against, a “motion,” such as “We must tol­er­ate a nuclear Iran,” “Free­dom of expres­sion must include the license to offend,” and “A demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Hamas is still a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.” And then there is the provoca­tive top­ic of the most recent debate, “Is Amer­i­ca Too Damn Reli­gious?” This debate (see bios of par­tic­i­pants) was held at the Asia Soci­ety in New York City in Feb­ru­ary, and you can catch the full debate here (Real Play­er) or a con­densed ver­sion here (mp3).

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)


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Welcome to the Islamic Reformation (and How to Make Sense of bin Laden)

in Religion | February 13th, 2007


Speak­ing recent­ly on Stan­ford’s cam­pus, Reza Aslan, an Iran­ian-Amer­i­can schol­ar who has writ­ten for The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate, sketched out an inter­est­ing frame­work for mak­ing sense of recent trends with­in the Mid­dle East, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in Islam itself (iTunes — feed N/A). His argu­ment is essen­tial­ly this: Islam is under­go­ing a ref­or­ma­tion that’s not ter­ri­bly unlike the one Chris­tian­i­ty under­went in the 16th cen­tu­ry. With­in Islam, we see indi­vid­u­als arro­gat­ing pow­er from the cler­i­cal estab­lish­ment, inter­pret­ing Islam for them­selves, and attempt­ing to return it to a more pure and orig­i­nal form. And what’s dri­ving all of this are three social and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions. First, the trans­la­tion of the Koran into many new lan­guages, which has made it acces­si­ble to wide­spread pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing non-Ara­bic-speak­ing peo­ple, for the first time.  Sec­ond, the par­tic­i­pa­tion in reformist move­ments by Mus­lims from the West, who bring their own indi­vid­u­al­is­tic per­spec­tives to the reli­gion. Third and most impor­tant­ly, the inven­tion of the Inter­net, which, much like the print­ing press dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry, has empow­ered new arbiters of Islam­ic law. Through the inter­net, new thinkers can get their ideas out there in unprece­dent­ed ways, mobi­lize sup­port behind a new body of reli­gious ideas, and com­pete effec­tive­ly with the old reli­gious order.

It is with­in this gen­er­al con­text of ref­or­ma­tion that Aslan places Usama bin Laden. Although the Islam­ic ref­or­ma­tion has been shaped by many mod­er­ate and pro­gres­sive fig­ures, there are, as with all refor­ma­tions, more rad­i­cal fig­ures who chal­lenge the tra­di­tion­al reli­gious insti­tu­tions and will resort to a patho­log­i­cal kind of vio­lence if nec­es­sary. In this instance, Aslan sees sim­i­lar­i­ties between bin Laden and more rad­i­cal fig­ures of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. Give the talk a lis­ten. And let your­self get past the first 10 min­utes because it starts a lit­tle slow­ly.

See our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast col­lec­tion.

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Philosophy Talk and Intelligent Design

in Philosophy, Religion | December 26th, 2006

Philostalk

It’s not quite “Car Talk,” but it’s not ter­ri­bly far away. Phi­los­o­phy Talk, a week­ly pub­lic radio pro­gram pre­sent­ed by two Stan­ford phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, offers a “down-to-earth and no-non­sense approach” to phi­los­o­phy that’s engag­ing, if not enter­tain­ing. The show, which can be streamed from the web site, tends to range wide­ly. In recent weeks, they’ve tak­en a look at neu­ro­science, Amer­i­can prag­ma­tism, quan­tum real­i­ty, war crimes, belief in God, and dream­ing, each time inter­view­ing a lead­ing thinker in the field and also post­ing help­ful, relat­ed infor­ma­tion on the The Phi­los­o­phy Talk blog.

To get a feel for how Ken Tay­lor and John Per­ry run their show, you may want to check out an episode that deals with intel­li­gent design, a the­o­ry that has emerged out of Amer­i­ca’s cul­ture wars to com­pete philo­soph­i­cal­ly or ide­o­log­i­cal­ly (depend­ing on how you see things) with evo­lu­tion. Here, the hosts are joined by Daniel Den­nett, the Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Stud­ies at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty and the author of Dar­win’s Dan­ger­ous Idea. Togeth­er, they tack­le the essen­tial ques­tions: “Is there any rea­son to
think the cause or caus­es of order in the uni­verse bear an even remote anal­o­gy to human intel­li­gence? Even if they did, would that mean these intel­li­gent caus­es had the benev­o­lence and sense of jus­tice required of a Chris­t­ian God? Is this whole issue one of sci­ence, reli­gion, or phi­los­o­phy?” You can catch the episode on iTunes or stream it through Real Play­er. (Also check out the resources at the bot­tom of this page.)

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Beyond Belief

in Religion | November 22nd, 2006


These days, the Enlight­en­ment project finds itself in a tense cul­tur­al com­pe­ti­tion with reli­gion. Go around the US and ask, “how did we come to be?” and you will get dif­fer­ent answers. Some, appeal­ing to sci­ence and rea­son, the chil­dren of the Enlight­en­ment, will look to evo­lu­tion for answers. Oth­ers, with a reli­gious bent, will refer you to the Bible or intel­li­gent design — which is anoth­er way of say­ing, God is behind it all.

Is the Enlight­en­ment project near­ing an end? Can sci­ence and rea­son even­tu­al­ly reassert them­selves, per­haps as pow­er­ful­ly as reli­gion recent­ly has? Or, can sci­ence and reli­gion at least co-exist and address dif­fer­ent ques­tions?

Ear­li­er this month, an impres­sive list of sci­en­tists and philoso­phers got togeth­er at the Salk Insti­tute for a con­fer­ence called, “Beyond Belief: Sci­ence, Reli­gion, Rea­son and Sur­vival.” The pre­sen­ters ranged from Richard Dawkins (Oxford’s well-known evo­lu­tion the­o­rist), to Joan Rough­gar­den (a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor who recent­ly wrote Evo­lu­tion and Chris­t­ian Faith: Reflec­tions of an Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gist), to Craig Ven­ter (who helped decode the human genome). Thanks to The Sci­ence Net­work, the so-called “C‑SPAN of sci­ence,” you can watch the videos of the dif­fer­ent con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions for free online.

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E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Creation

in Books, Religion | October 28th, 2006

A world renowned biol­o­gist, devot­ed Dar­win­ist, and unabashed sec­u­lar human­ist, Har­vard’s E.O. Wil­son has tak­en an intrigu­ing reli­gious turn with his lat­est work, “The Cre­ation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.” A Bap­tist by upbring­ing, Wil­son offers lit­er­al­ly a ser­mon addressed to Amer­i­ca’s large and grow­ing evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. The essence of the mes­sage is sim­ple: We might have our polit­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al dif­fer­ences, but, when it comes to staving off envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, we need to put our sim­mer­ing dif­fer­ences aside and work togeth­er to solve a prob­lem that affects us all. We need to save God’s cre­ation. If you con­sid­er the divide between red and blue Amer­i­ca, you’d fig­ure that Wilson’s over­ture would fall on deaf ears. But, as Wil­son tells it on NPR, it’s any­thing but the case, and the first signs sug­gest that the cul­ture wars aren’t blind­ing either side from the much big­ger issues at stake.

Recent reviews:

Wash­ing­ton Post: “Sci­ence and Sal­va­tion”

New York Times: “God is Green”

The Chris­t­ian Post “Heed­ing Edward O. Wil­son”

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