Thursday, January 6, 2005

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MOTHER GOOSE?

Do you believe in Mother Goose? Clarence Darrow said:

I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose. (www.wisdomquotes.com)


I learned about the above mentioned quote from Harry Binswanger's post, Wishful non-thinking (01/04/05).

I recommend you to read Gus Van Horn's review of Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith.

Talking about religious people, yesterday evening I met a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is bit more difficult to spot a Mormon in the street of Sopron, than an Amish man in Troy, Ohio. [Editor's comment: I saw plenty of Amish people during my time in Troy, Ohio. For a funny illustration, scroll down my post, INTERVIEW WITH JOHN COX & ALLEN FORKUM, and read Cox & Forkum's reply to my question, "Amish versus Technology."] The guy held a black book in his hand, but I didn't give him any chance to start quoting from it. I told him to read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Whittaker Chambers of The National Review did a so-called review of Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Here is an excerpt from Robert Trancinski's post, NRO Revisits an Old Low.

Yet it is precisely a religious philosophy that Chambers is trying to prop up by knocking down Ayn Rand. His deepest complaint: "Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world." Chambers, like today's religious conservatives, presumably preferred a "God-centered" society, which some of NRO's authors are all too glad to enforce at the point of a gun.

This is a reminder that when it comes to a conflict between religion and the greatest philosophical (and literary) defender of liberty in the past century, the conservatives have chosen--and are continuing to choose--religion. It is reminder that conservative intellectuals like Whittaker Chambers--and those at today's NRO who agree with him--are ultimately the enemies of liberty. (tiadaily.blogspot.com, 01/05/05.)

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