Oh not that again
And another thing. As long as I’m quarreling with Alibhai-Brown – I get tired of this familiar chunk of doggerel:
Some aspects of our nature are not susceptible to scientific enquiry, cannot be dissected, categorised and validated in terms that would satisfy the “rational” disbelievers, whose intellect is colossal but imagination puny. There are no experiments and tests to explain love, empathy, longing, the agony and ecstasy of the heart, the wild and wonderful creativity of the brain…
That is such kack – yet people go on trotting it out as if it were transcendent and indisputable wisdom. Of course there are experiments and tests to explain love and the rest of it – experiments and tests, theories and evidence, as well as centuries of stories and personal accounts. They’re not a black box, they’re not immune to inquiry and even experiments and tests, and the findings of experiments and tests are highly interesting. It’s not the brash fanatic zealous hysterical atheists who are trying to rule knowledge out of order, it’s obscurantist epithet-hurling Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Give her a zero for the course.
What gets me is this– Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that there are, indeed, aspects of our nature that for some mysterious reason cannot be studied through scientific inquiry. Well, so what? That’s what fiction and poetry and music and visual arts are for, and they do it well. God is not required. So why go straight from “some things are not too amenable to scientific analysis” to this puny Goddishness? Where’s the imagination there?
Incidentally, it was my understanding that the Blue Mosque was inspired mostly by plain old competitiveness. And by “inspired”, I basically mean “funded”. Piety is a great excuse for blowing a wad of cash on some big monument.
For myself, knowing the science of why the moon shines is part of the glory of the experience of seeing the full moon over the sea. When I stop to consider it, it allows me a deep sense of place in the solar system, and a sudden sense of scale. Irrelevant? Never. I pity Ms. Alibhai-Brown for the impoverished sentimentality of her experience. Thin gruel. A “spirituality” that cannot engage with the real, physical facts of the universe is nothing much to admire.
Yes, OB! I don’t get it either. Do the people who say this ever, ever stop and think: Is this really true? I just can’t see how you can hold these kinds of ideas after more than a few minutes thought.
My theory is this: we are dealing with literary types here. Writers (not necessarily good writers, mind). It doesn’t really matter if it’s true when you have pretentions of literature, when you want to make phrases.
Come on! “The agony and ecstasy of the heart, the wild and wonderful creativity of the brain.” Sounds good, no? Who are we to deny the good Ms Alibhai-Brown her moment of rightful and oh-so-stylistic indignation?
What’s particularly irritating is that, contrary to her allegations, Dawkins for one has made numerous specific references to the wonders of nature and the awe he feels when contemplating the universe – as cam says he just doesn’t jump from there to God.
So on this point at least YAB is clearly …
People often confuse “explaining” with “explaining away” and so they fear it when applied to experiences that they cherish such as love.
They are confusing their experience of love (which will not be altered by explanation unless they are particularly shallow) with its construction. They are confusing the car with the factory.
If you explain the precise construction and history of The Statue Of Liberty to someone it does not suddenly wink out of existence for them. Indeed they may come to appreciate it more because of that knowledge.
But of course the Statue of Liberty is just a physical phenomenon, nothing mystical, unlike the neuro-physiological phenomena of love.
Note also the attempt to link Dawkins with racism by suggesting that the concept of an idea as a mind-virus is equivalent to believing the holder of the idea to be a virus. It is hard to see this as anything but deliberate rather than mistaken. Perhaps better to drop the whole thing, as it is becomes difficult to discuss without using the forbidden word.
How about using a substitute word for the forbidden l-word? Regular readers will know what is meant by it. I propose “lounging.” For some reason, I find the word amusing.
You can say ‘misrepresenting’ (provided you don’t add ‘deliberately’).
It’s interesting: exactly this subject was discussed on ‘On the Media’ this week – Bob Garfield grilled a NY Times editor on why the Times refused to say Gonzales lied, even though it did say he misrepresented etc. The editor’s explanation was interesting, whether one agrees with it or not. Part of it has to do with epistemology, and the distinction between describing what has happened (X has been misrepresented) and what is inside someone’s head. It really is a fair point – it usually is impossible to tell for sure when someone is lying. (David Irving is one exception to that because of the extent of his falsifications of evidence. Unless he has a serious brain abnormality he couldn’t have done all that without knowing he was doing it.)
None of this of course is intended to imply that I approve of the UK libel laws; I don’t. I’m just stuck with them.
I don’t think Yazzer’s pants are on fire. She always comes across as honest to me though wrong-headed sometimes.
(Are you allowed to say pants are on fire? Or will the libel laws come down on that as well? Anyway I said I didn’t think that. . . ) Someone else work it out!
I wish someone would draw a cartoon of Puny Imagination sparring up to Colossal Intellect.
Nothing wrong with calling someone a liar in the UK, it’s just that you either have to be able to prove it on the balance of probabilities, or they have to be a person that everyone already assumes is a liar and so it becomes fair comment. Both of these apply to David Irving, who’s also a tosspot (pure insult is never libellous!).
As legal counsel for Mr Irving, I must request that the comment by the poster going by the pseudonym “Rockingham” be removed. Failure to comply will result in a libel action unless the proprietor of this website and/or “Rockingham” can substantiate the claim that Mr Irving is in fact a recepticle for the deposition of manually extracted jism.
I happen to have photographs of Mr Irving being just that for an unknown man in a Herman Goring mask. So there.
Oh, please, as if there aren’t enough horrors to wake me up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat, you have to go plant *that* image in my mind….
Pyotr, OB – reminds me of (British Radio Series, the usual Footlights suspects) “I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again:”
John Clees: “So…it’s blackmail, is it?”
Graeme Garden: “Please. Blackmail is such an ugly word.”
John: “All right. How about fishpaste?”
Graeme: “Much better.”
John: “So…it’s fishpaste, is it?”
Good idea P.any l word will do.
Live and learn! Here I was thinking tosspots were people who ‘tossed off’ pints of beer like there was no tomorrow.
Ahhnoo.. I am wrong to trust what I read on the internets AGAIN:
“
The term tosspot, one of abuse, has come to be a synonym for ‘tosser’, someone who ‘tosses’ or masturbates. However, it originally referred to commodes as used in medieval London. This is evidenced by the final song in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. “
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosspot
Twelfth Night itself caused my confusion, actually:
“But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain, it raineth every day. “
I think I could be excused for thinking the primary meaning was drunkards.
“it originally referred to commodes as used in medieval London”
Commode – a receptacle for shit. Seems that whatever its meaning it refers to the Nazi thug.
Ahh, the living language. The term ‘tosser’ is now more prevalent in common parliance here in blighty, ‘tosspot’ being a tad antiquated. ‘Tosser’ is more pointed, the same offence level and meaning as (in the UK) ‘w@nker’. ‘Nazi thug’ has a nice ring to it. As does ‘sh1tweed’, ‘c0ck’, ‘f#cktard’, or ‘raging abuser of animals’.
Ah, it may be antiquated but with ‘tosspot’ you get two unvoiced plosives for your money. It is therefore more satisfying to say.
It is altogether classier, I agree.
I like “rightard” for right-wing nutjobs.
Nah, just say “Republican.” That’s good enough. Everyone with any brains or humanity at all has already left that sorry organization.