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arroba
Stuck with another deadline today, so news posting will be light till tonight.
Meanwhile, remember Brian Leiter?
Apparently, U Chicago prof Brian Leiter is author of numerous screeds, of which this is an example in our field of interest: “pathological liars from the Discovery [sic] Institute, the public relations arm of the “Intelligent Design” scam; on the other, Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois, and John Derbyshire, a pontificator at the National Review (who at least knows enough to know that “Intelligent Design” is bogus), who are championing a different intellectual muddle:”
The whole planet is dumb except Leiter?
Well, he has finally got his colleagues’ attention. We have it on good authority that a well-known British philosophy department has started to complain about a guy with good degrees who sounds like a fishwife on market day.
First, a question: What is it about being an atheist and Darwin defender that tends to bring this out in people? C.S. Lewis noted the problem yay years ago (1951): “What inclines me now to think that you may be right in regarding it as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders. ”
Now, by way of explaining the above, a favour to ask: A friend has sent me a vid of Brian Leiter and another legal scholar, David Skeel, on Why Tolerate Religion? Could someone with more free time than I have just now watch it and offer some impressions?
The title is the name of Leiter’s book on the subject:
This provocative book addresses one of the most enduring puzzles in political philosophy and constitutional theory–why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse? Why, for example, can a religious soup kitchen get an exemption from zoning laws in order to expand its facilities to better serve the needy, while a secular soup kitchen with the same goal cannot? Why is a Sikh boy permitted to wear his ceremonial dagger to school while any other boy could be expelled for packing a knife? Why are religious obligations that conflict with the law accorded special toleration while other obligations of conscience are not?
Well, we don’t need to tolerate religion; we could always go back to the Wars of Religion instead. It was that kind of thing, no doubt, t hat got religion to the top of the In tray.
Back at the News desk soon. – O’Leary for News
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Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose