Thanks. To me this all indicates to ‘invisible’ worshippers of non-existent idols, that the internet is here, people need to be honest in whatever they do and lets get the internet avaialble to the entire world. Buffer them a bit though, it can be horrific when all you were brought up to believe (and all your ancestors beliefs too) is a lie, all were deceived. Life choices stolen so savagely by nasty intent and ambiguity - If Mr.Obama would understand all this, he could be a truly great guy. Here’s to ‘hope’ (that used to be illegal in ancient Greece!)

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I like the comments on the value of story telling and how stories can be useful as metaphors or mental models that we can use to structure our experience.  Of course, the problem with all models and metaphors is acknowledging their limitations and recognizing where they don’t apply.  Religion as a story or a metaphor may be useful sometimes, but it isn’t true.

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Truly amazing that we still need commentary like this to convince people that Tarot Cards (for example) don’t have magic powers.  Even more so that it has to be explained in gentle, non-offensive ways.

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Yes to most—however, I do think that we can view the video taking account that internal human structures and dynamisms can be teased out of all expressions of human meaning. As such, we CAN find what can be rightly referred to as secular fundamentalism, etc,  in history.

In such cases, what Eric Voegelin calls the “libido dominandi” comes forward, without the influence or language of the Bible, et al, in people like Stalin and Hitler—to draw on two worst-case-scenarios to make the point clear.

Dogmatism and fundamentalism are human developmental issues, and are ongoing “fundamental” potential stances of human being. They are not only manifest when under the umbrella of overtly-religious language and meaning—though of course they are famously so in many cases.

But then neither (I would argue) are all doctrine-oriented religious people necessarily dogmatic or fundamentalist.

In terms of paradigm shifts, I think Harris’ and others’ thought here are finally moving us past the horrible influences of positivism in the last several centuries to find a new integrative sense of science without losing critical method.

I saw Harris’ talk on Book TV—we can finally think of faith in its own powerful place without having to equate it with empirically established knowledge—which I think is where much of the dogmatism comes from.

Catherine King

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