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Thomas Nagel om rädsla för religion

Postat november 8, 2009 i Apologetik, Citat, Filosofi, Tro & Kyrka  |  1 kommentar

Thomas Nagel är professor i filosofi och rättsvetenskap vid New York University. Han skriver något ytterst intressant angående rädsla för religion (rädsla för Gud?):

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehood. I am talking about something much deeper — namely, the fear of religion itself.

I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that…

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind.

(från The Last Word, 1997. s. 130-131)

Vissa vill helt enkelt inte att Gud ska existera. Många gömmer detta, tror jag, bakom dåliga argument. Därför är det uppfriskande att Nagel säger det rakt ut. Notera kopplingen han gör till vetenskapstro, reduktionism och ”överanvändning” av evolutionsbiologi. Mitt i prick, om ni frågar mig.

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”They are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard”

Postat februari 25, 2009 i Citat  |  Inga kommentarer

C.S. Lewis i The Weight of Glory, s. 3:

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both.

[...]

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not  in them, it only came  through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

[...]

Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. And yet it is a remarkable thing that such philosophies of Progress or Creative Evolution themselves bear reluctant witness to the truth that our real goal is elsewhere.

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Peter Kreeft om objektiv och relativ moral

Postat augusti 26, 2007 i Allmänna åsikter & funderingar, Apologetik, Citat, Filosofi  |  1 kommentar

I en föreläsning jag nyligen lyssnade på gör Peter Kreeft (filosofiprofessor vid Boston College) följande analys:

The existence of a real morality, a real distinction between good and evil, cannot be explained without something like God. That argument presupposed the premise that good and evil are objectively real. Many people say they don’t believe that premise. They say morality is man-made, subjective and relative. Like the rules of a game or politics.

But when you ask this people whether they really believe that it’s okay to rape, or to be a Hitler, or a cannibal, or even to burn down the rain forest, they don’t say then that morality is only subjective.

When they tell you not to impose your morality on them, suppose you tell them ‘That’s your morality, but imposing morality on other people, that’s my morality!’ And tell them not to impose their morality of tolerance and respect and justice on you. If you tell them that you’ll soon see whether they’re really moral relativists or not.

You’ll find out that they are only selective relativists, that pretty much the only things they’re relativistic about has something to do with sex. That sounds silly and simplistic to say, and I feel a little bit like the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes for saying it. But I don’t say it in order to be provocative, I say it because it seems to be true.

(Källa: ”Ethics: A History of Moral Thought”, föreläsning 4, ”Being Good & Being Pious – Plato’s Euthyphro”, från ca 27 minuter och framåt. Föreläsningssamlingen är utgiven av Recorded Books och mer information finns här.)

Jag kunde, av ytterst uppenbara skäl, inte ha sagt det bättre själv! ;-)

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Filosofi/Religion