Another Blow Struck Against Learning
And there is this horrible item. Part of the heart-warming series ‘how can we make women’s lives more helpless and deprived and nasty than they already are?’
Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan have executed a school teacher in front of his pupils for refusing to comply with warnings to stop educating girls.
Well of course they have, because that kind of behavior interferes with the whole project. Sets it right back. What good is is for the Taliban to keep valiantly struggling to take away every single right and capacity and freedom and pleasure and opportunity and chance that women have, if evil thugs like this teacher are going to come along and educate them? Is he crazy? The whole point with women is to shove them into a corner and then everybody gather together and get on top of them until they are squashed down into something about the size of an acorn, and can’t talk or move anymore. Not to educate them! Duh.
“He had received many warning letters from the Taliban to stop teaching, but he continued to do so happily and honestly – he liked to teach boys and girls.”
How sickening. He liked to teach boys and girls, he liked to give them something, and make them bigger, and more able to make choices and expand and grow. What he should have liked to do, of course, is to stamp all that out, and make them smaller and more hopeless. That’s the right thing to do, that’s virtue and purity.
Under the Taliban interpretation of Islamic Sharia law female education was banned, along with female employment. Since the overthrow of the Taliban government by the US-led invasion of 2001, the Afghan government claims six million Afghan children have returned to school, many of them girls. However, Taliban insurgents in the south have repeatedly targeted schools, burning many to the ground at night or issuing beatings or warnings to teachers.
Good, good, good. That’s the way. High priority, burning down schools. Great. Afghanistan’s a poor country, it can’t just go re-building schools every ten minutes, so burning the nasty things down is the way to go. Very spiritual. Three cheers for religion.
Spot on Ophelia!
Three cheers for religion.
Not bad, or wrong religion, just religion.
All religions kill, torture and enslave.
And don’t you forget it.
And don’t allow any pathetic whingeing from other who go…
“Oh, but they’re not PROPER christains / muslims/ marxists WE’RE different!
No you’re not, you are all lying blackmailers.
Wellllll.
I think people in general-especially people with a will to power/dominant/alpha way of thinking and behaving (i.e., “leaders”) are as a group all “lying blackmailers” when it comes to power/competition for resources. Religion is merely a mechanism developed BY PEOPLE (not by any supernatural force) for excusing our baser instincts and whipping up good ol’ in group versus out group hysteria.
So, I’m not sure religion per se is the CAUSE of this behavior. It just exacerbates and excuses and explains it. A quibble, I know.
What does the group think about the “Divided Consciousness” theory that posits the source of religion in a pre-modern pre-consciouss “bicameral mind”?
‘What does the group think about the “Divided Consciousness” theory that posits the source of religion in a pre-modern pre-consciouss “bicameral mind”? ‘
Well, it was pretty startling stuff back in 1976, when University of Toronto Press published Julian Jaynes’s _The Origin of Conseiousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_, But that was thirty years ago, and enthusiasm seems to have cooled.
OTOH, a google search on ‘bicameral mind’ produced 160,000 hits. There is a Julian Jaynes Society, for those who are very interested in the matter.
I scalped this abstract from the society’s articles page:
‘The Oracles and Their Cessation; A Tribute to Julian Jaynes
Stove, David Charles
Encounter, April 1989, Vol. 72: 30-38
There is no mystery about why there is farming or industry, why there is instruction of the young, why there is architecture, medicine, or law. But the most salient fact of all human history is this: that all those things, and many others, have almost always been suffused through-and-through with religion, and subordinated by it. All right: but why does religion exist? This is the question of questions concerning Homo sapiens. And I want to commend – and argue with – a book published some dozen years ago which to my mind comes closer to answering that question than everything else I have read about the matter put together. Its author is Julian Jaynes.’
HTH, and cheeers,
All religion is born of teaching with
powerful institutions keeping it in place; not sprung from a primitive – some say biogenetically furnished – psyche confronting a deceiving world, but through symbolism and semantic blunder coupled to episodic inputs of group-controlling eisegetic spin, it
represents the derivative and degenerate
remains of a culture-conscious philosophy – cultural cancers sustained by the hijacking of the emotions and the educative impulse. And that’s why the bullshit persists.
_
I’m not as well-educated as you are, Adam. Help me understand what you are saying. Are you saying that religion is basically a meme, a cultural “eruption” that appears in the underground “chatter” of every culture? The eruptions that find powerful supporters then become “religions” with all the coercive power that Mr. Tingley warns about us?
Not quite, Brian, I’m suggesting that ‘the church’ is the degenerate offspring of ‘the school’. A clarification of some of my thoughts – culture-conscious philosophy: the recognition of what separates Man from other animals (what Man does and monkeys don’t) and the need to pass it on. I’m suggesting that protoculture was not for long as unselfconscious as we tend to assume it was. A related thought: Cave art – the first universities? – colleges of advanced technology?
Primitive or degenerate: positive knowledge must come first; for example, it is commonly supposed that astrology gave rise to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, etc. This is nonsense – this is to assume that counterfeit coinage predated the genuine article. Positive knowledge must come first – and last. Religious ideas are derivative and degenerate (not “primitive”) and a developed culture acquires a certain amount of resilience. Incipient protoculture could never have been religious.
Symbolism and semantic blunder – I would also keep culture-contact and cargo cults firmly in mind when thinking on these matters.
_
I have long thought that a major impetus for the creation of religion was the exigencies of child rearing and acculturation. Doesn’t it make sense that parents, needing to influence the behavior and attitudes of their pre-rational children would resort to inventing supernatural forces with tales and legends of beings with more standing than they themselves had? So for hundreds of thousands of years, parents have been employing the imagery of the supernatural in order to help shape the behavior of their children, who were not resposive to a list of rules, but who could be affected by powerful stories of another world.
I’d be really interested in the opinions of the readers of B&W (particularly Adam, whose erudite thoughts seem to be somewhat along these lines) about this idea.
I have always thought, in my naive way, that ‘religion’, i.e. deity-worship, must follow in general from an untutored encounter with the world, and specifically the difference between being alive and being dead. It *seems* self-evident that something ‘leaves’ the body upon death, and that that something can’t be seen, so must be ‘spirit’. Now we know that all this is just a cessation of biological function, but how must it have seemed to peoples only just establishing true consciousness?
And once ‘life’ has been pinned down to ‘spirit’, it’s not a great reach to pin ‘big shitty things happening’ down to ‘big angry spirits’ — remembering that much religion [probably most] is about propitiation…
Not to take on an editorial “we” as I am not the site admin or writer :), but, let me take one stab at Irrational’s complaint from MY perspective.
Some of us don’t necessarily believe that all religious doctrines are “bad.” They can represent a significant reservoir of folk wisdom about life and reality.
What all of us object to is the coercive, truth-denying, even violent components which seem to attach themselves to and even subsume the positive aspects of religious doctrine. I do not accept religion’s special place in realms where it is not appropriate, like science or even in many cases politics. Certainly not war, I don’t believe that any God could be supporting the debacle in Iraq, as is claimed by the closet theocrats currently in power.
As for “secular doctrines,” some of us (not all, we’ve had lengthy debates) still believe that such though systems as Marxist-Lenninism and Fascism share many of the attributes of religion (although not all), so we extend our criticism of religious oppression to these secular religions as well.
I assume you’re talking to G Tingey, IP, yes? I assume you’re not talking to me. I haven’t said “all religion is inherently bad an destructive”. I find that idea somewhat meaningless, apart from anything else. What does it mean? That all religion is inherently bad and destructive in every possible way? But how could that be? And even if it could be, it isn’t. So I don’t usually make sweepingly meaningless generalizations like that, at least I don’t think I do.
By not providing a “Protected Place” for the religious, OB, you effectively do just that, don’t you know? (allow the meme that all religions are bad to rpevail, that is):)
I was primarily addressing G Tingey. However, OB, your “three cheers for religion” implies that it´s because of the existence of religion that these practices exist, and that´s a pretty sweeping generalisation. But no, I´m not accusing you of having that mindset. It´s nothing to do with providing a “protected place” as Brian Miller suggests.
“What all of us object to is the coercive, truth-denying, even violent components which seem to attach themselves to and even subsume the positive aspects of religious doctrine.”
Agreed. What i´m objecting to is the idea that such coercive, truth-denying, and even violent components in seculare ideologies. Perhaps my use of “doctrine” was not quite correct — i´m referring to things like sexism.
In many countries, girls are less likely to be educated than boys, or are educated less well than boys. In my experience, that´s because of seuclar prejudices more often than religious ones. The situation is common in India and Latin America jsut becuase many people regard girls as inferior to boys, bt not becuase they beleive it blasphemous to teach girls.
–IP
IP: I would grant you your arguments and return to a perhaps badly phrased original idea up-thread: Religion is historically the best mechanism for shoring up the nastier attributes of human behavior-the latter perhaps derived from cultural/biological (chimps are pretty nasty creatures, after all) basis of most human societies.
I would also argue-this may make me an apostate on this site :) that religions can indeed in many cases help cultures/socities overcome our nastier heritage from our pre-human/early human ancestors????
I’ll even grant that the desert thunder god religions have their good points, especially as they evolved in contact with Eastern and Greek religions (i.e., Christianity)
IP has a point. I’m still not sure we can “blame” religion primarily or alone for the nastiness of the hairless apes (us). Chimpanzees don’t have a church, and they still have wars and rape, and the like.
Of course, as G. Tingley notes, religion is very effective at codifying and justifying and encouraging our own base instincts. As even Saint Dawkins would note, humans (and nature) are not very nice. Our institutions merely refelct that.
I’m not blaming religion alone. I am blaming a particular religion for this particular situation. There’s a difference.
“No. There are lots of followers of that one religion that do not believe that these practices should exist.”
Yes, but in this particular case, their views did not prevail.
“They might well have had a state secular police force to back it up.”
They might have, but they didn’t. This specific situation is a matter of specific events in a specific place, not a potential or hypothetical.
Mind you – I agree with you that the misogyny is primary. But in this particular case, it is the religion that enables the misogyny to enforce its hostile controlling wishes. Still if you want me to say I hate misogyny at least as much as I do religion, I can easily do that.
“I’m not blaming religion alone. I am blaming a particular religion for this particular situation. There’s a difference.”
It’s not clear to me that doing so is accurate or constructive. It’s comparable to saying that secularism is to blame for other mysogynistic situations, like rape.
“But in this particular case, it is the religion that enables the misogyny to enforce its hostile controlling wishes.”
I think it’s the other way around.
–IP
“It’s not clear to me that doing so is accurate or constructive. It’s comparable to saying that secularism is to blame for other mysogynistic situations, like rape.”
No it’s not. It’s not comparable at all. Do rapists ever cite secularism as a reason or justification for rape? Not that I’m aware of. But religious people emphatically do cite their religion as a – in fact the – reason or justification for, for instance, not educating women. That is why it is both accurate and constructive to point out the part religion plays in shoring up ideas that would otherwise collapse, or stand revealed as the nasty tyrannical self-interested piles of crap they are.
“I think it’s the other way around.”
Why? How would that work? Do the Talibanists who kill teachers for educating girls and boys say “we’re doing this because we hate girls and women”?
“That is why it is both accurate and constructive to point out the part religion plays in shoring up ideas that would otherwise collapse, or stand revealed as the nasty tyrannical self-interested piles of crap they are.”
Religion can be used to justify anything you want to justify, or to make imperative anything you want to make imperative.
Yes, a lot of aspects of religion are tyrannical and self-interested and crappy. it’s also tyrannical and self-interested and crappy to rape someone. They rapist may not say it was *because* of secularism, but the rapist is nevertheless being a self-interested shite, with or without religion to make him/her so.
“Do the Talibanists who kill teachers for educating girls and boys say “we’re doing this because we hate girls and women”?”
I think that it’s what they think. I think they do it because they hate girls and women. If they didn’t hate girls and women they wouldn’t be able to hold the beliefs that they hold.
–IP
Okay, IP, I think now you’re just deliberately missing the point. I know religion can be used to justify anything you want to justify, that’s my point. Not all systems of ideas can be used that way. People can say ‘God says’ or ‘Allah says’ or ‘the Bible says’ or ‘the Koran says’ and get obedience that they would not get otherwise.
“They rapist may not say it was *because* of secularism”
This is why you’re missing the point. Of course the rapist doesn’t say it was because of secularism, but the Talibanists who kill teachers do say they do it because of religion – and that’s why I said three cheers for religion. Why is that so hard to understand?
“I think they do it because they hate girls and women. If they didn’t hate girls and women they wouldn’t be able to hold the beliefs that they hold.”
I’ve already agreed with that, but the point is, they get to use religion to make their misogyny both respectable and powerful.
Let’s bag this now, it’s a waste of time, you’re not paying attention.
“This is why you’re missing the point. Of course the rapist doesn’t say it was because of secularism, but the Talibanists who kill teachers do say they do it because of religion – and that’s why I said three cheers for religion. Why is that so hard to understand?”
actually, i got it the first time round. what i meant was that i don’t think it’s constructive to attack religion generally. attack this kind of fanaticism, by all means, but i just disagree with you about attacking religion generally.
“Let’s bag this now”
ok
–IP