tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post4791448337921246952..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: The Stupid! It Burns! (yet another straw man edition)Larry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-37252852783749046032011-06-03T06:24:59.801-06:002011-06-03T06:24:59.801-06:00I have replied at length.I have <a href="http://barefootbum.blogspot.com/2011/06/anonymous-commenter-asks-larry-let-me.html" rel="nofollow">replied at length</a>.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-65778438399754639832011-06-03T05:55:44.333-06:002011-06-03T05:55:44.333-06:00Of COURSE not everyone would be happy if there wer...Of COURSE not everyone would be happy if there were no religion - all the con artists, politicians, and psychopaths who use religion to manipulate and control people would be VERY unhappy.DBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17805375811782552873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-48171525065013159272011-06-02T17:56:27.617-06:002011-06-02T17:56:27.617-06:00Thanks Larry, here's one more example, and tha...Thanks Larry, here's one more example, and thanks for hearing me out. I read another little atheistic article recently, just a little response to that Deepak Chopra piece -- & what a piece! -- on Christopher Hitchens. I can't link to it now, I don't remember where it is. But it's a decent response to Chopra -- it creams him -- but then the author says a similar thing to the Pullman thing, but references Cardinal Newman; says, "Oh, I can admire Newman's scientific work and deride his religiousness for the childish garbage that it is." Now I'm not a churchgoer & I don't pray. I was raised in a very conservative environment but got out. I had some bad experiences, I tend to deride orthodoxy in knee-jerk fashion. But still, Larry, the lives of Newman, Blake, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard -- Wittgenstein -- I find them profoundly moving and instructive, and profoundly important for an understanding of the novels, poetry, philosophical works, etc., and I know -- speaking for myself -- that to sneer at the beating heart of the personalities of these men, no matter what my own views, would severely limit me, would shrink me, and would certainly shrink & gut my relationship to them. I can understand knee-jerk reactions as I say, and probably most of these reactions (I hope) have to do with taking so much shit from so many fundamentalists for so long, well, fuck them. But it seems one has to get past it eventually or become a fundamentalist, a dirty fundamentalist oneself. Thanks again.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-75193182206671521482011-06-02T12:14:55.283-06:002011-06-02T12:14:55.283-06:00Interesting comment, anonymous. Later, I'll re...Interesting comment, anonymous. Later, I'll reply more substantively.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-66420964254166633122011-06-02T11:59:47.411-06:002011-06-02T11:59:47.411-06:00Larry, let me ask you something. Take the His Dark...Larry, let me ask you something. Take the <i>His Dark Materials</i> books by Philip Pullman. I don't know if you read children's books, but never mind. The point is that Pullman as an artist can be quite a profound fellow, but Pullman as an atheist often says things that strike me as vulgar and shallow. This in spite of the fact that his little masterpiece takes a pretty dim view of belief. Pullman says, for example, that he can separate Blake's poetry from Blake's religion, and revile -- revile! sneer at, laugh at, etc. -- the latter, and do no disservice to Blake. That feels like bullshit to me though I could be wrong. This idea that faith, any example of faith, is automatically contemptible, a piece of sheer silliness, an incomprehensible lapse (no exceptions!) on the part of fellows who are geniuses in every other sense--this seems so, so damn vulgar. It seems (seems) nowadays that your mainstream atheist is as closed and self-congratulatory as your fringe fundamentalist--but also hip, unlike the latter. So you have this unbearably smug, narrow culture -- one more of those in a crowded world. It's awful.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com