06.24.09
Robert Wright. Strike three and you’re out
In an interview with something to offend everyone, Robert Wright explains why religion has given us a fickle deity
Still another Wright review. We have lambasted him enough here already. No, one more time won’t much matter.
These fashionable mag/web portals reflex on such books because they make good copy.
Since Wright intersected with World History And The Eonic Effect in 1999 and this influenced his book Non Zero for the worse, why not consider the ‘evolution of religion’ as portrayed in that book?
You cannot figure out the Old Testament without the methods given there, period.
The alternative is Wright’s half-baked muddling around with ‘materialist’ assumptions trying to make sense of the confusing complexity of Israelite religion with nary a mention of one of the keys: the phenomenon of the Axial Age.
First, I don’t find this book offensive, but repulsive, or maybe just stupid.
Darwinists have put themselves last in line behind even fundamentalists in their lead-footed tromp through religion-land, oblivious to the phenomena they really wish to do a Dawkins on.
Intellectuals and scholars need to be wary of evolutionary psychology. Its false assumptions will vitiate any attempt to study culture or religion. I think Wright is getting suspicious himself here. It doesn’s add up to try and debunk religion with Darwinian analyses. You end up wronger than the wrong, and stuck with all the superficial cliches of the New Atheists and Dawkins groupies.
Wright seems to hover between the New Atheist perspective and a latent strain, or wish to be a Karen Armstrong, knowing he closed himself out of that market.
Wright’s Non Zero is also crap historical theory, and my beef with him was over the way he trashed (without mentioning my book) my Kant theme in the first edition of WHEE. That’s a dangerous tactic: you can read WHEE and see exactly where sociobiological history is simply delusional.
I pursued him over the Internet for two years in anger. So my comments are ‘biased’. My point is not an accusation of anything anymore, unless it is celebrity arrogance in the book market (and stupidity), and the illusion they can solve the problems of society, but a reminder that almost all the secondary Darwin literature like this is wrong, yet gets a strong currency.
All I asked for was equal time, but these people know that without the backdrop of the social domination of the Paradigm, all their work collapses. The seeming exception is the religious critics, but these are the best possible foil to maintain the Darwin illusion.
This review actually gets into Buddhism, and we learn that Wright has done a Buddhist meditation retreat. Pack him off to the caves of Almora, and pulp his books:
1. The Moral Animal
2. Non Zero
3. The Evolution of God
What a waste
Strike three and you’re out.
James said,
June 24, 2009 at 2:50 pm
“But aren’t Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism actually more open to the idea that other religions can also be the path to truth and salvation? ”
That’s laughable. Clearly, these two idiots are unaware of the long history of friction between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. The supposed “tolerance” and “pluralism” of Hinduism is really a tactic to absorb attacks against the religion: why else would they construct a story about the Buddha being an avatar of Vishnu who deliberately preached a false doctrine to the enemies of Hinduism in an effort to destroy them? It strikes me as a bit absurd to project the New Agey eclectic “Eastern” religions that developed in the 20th century on the earlier periods.
James said,
June 24, 2009 at 3:01 pm
…and that doesn’t even get into the rivalries between Buddhists, Jains, Samkhyans, etc. in the Axial period.
Alan Robert Wright said,
December 13, 2009 at 11:33 am
My name is Alan Robert wright, I feel compelled to leave a comment on the attacks on my name sake. I would consider myself a philosopher but more of a poet even though I am educated as a scientist. I have not read the books by Mr Wright but maybe I should since I do not wish to be confused with him.
I am leaving a couple of comments based on my own thoughts. First the word atheist is a none entity, it is only a reflection on a disbelief in god. The complete definition of god is never presented in any religious documentation. The prevailing information about him (or her) describes him as a creator or as a supreme authority. As you all now, history indicates many cultures considering their god as the only god. This is a concept that has grown over time coherent with the growth of civilization and has usually been perpetuated by the state. Another attribute assigned to god, is the creator of the universe, world, existence, cosmos or whatever word you choose to use. Logically speaking there is absolutely no way to prove or disprove such a concept. For all any one knows the universe could have been created one moment ago complete with all our memories and physical evidence of a long and elaborate history. Thus, such arguments and ideas are fruitless and only relevant on their effects on our current society.
Another word I have serious issues with is pagan. Another concept that is only a reflection on belief in christianity. Ancient, pre-civilized cultures, I argue, did not have a concept of god. They believed in the forces of nature much more like science believes today. The descriptions and history written about these ancient ways have consistently been warped by the writers own concept of gods or god. The evidence of this is overwhelming. For example, Tacitus comparing the ‘god’ of the Britons as Mercury.
The real historical and philosophical debate should be on the actual struggle of mankind. That is between the ‘force that binds’ and the ‘force that breaks’. Between those wishing to maintain the status quo and the importance of order and stability in a universe that is ever changing. If the universe was created only a moment ago, the next moment was different than the one before. To argue against evolution is to argue against change. They really only arguments for their own unprovable theological beliefs, which, I think, are the results of a lack of imagination which I also consider to be a form of mental ineptitude.