Sam Harris

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000091.html

Check out this blog, which is a rebuttal to the philosophically-shallow and factually-challenged David Brooks ("conservative" oped writer for NY Times), who bemoans the fact that the tsunami has apparently created a philosophical "opening" for atheism.

Brooks writes in his oped: "This is a moment to feel deeply bad, for the dead and for those of us who have no explanation [for why the tsunami happened]."

And DeLong rebuts:  "No. This is not a moment to feel bad for those of us who have no explanation for the tsunami and so wallow in existential despair. This is not a moment for that at all."

Conversation ends with a good passage by Richard Dawkins on the rational lessons that should be derived from the tsunami.

Hillary

Shorter David Brooks:

Nature is evil. It must be eradicated.

-by unstable isotope

This is a post on the weblog mentioned and I think it is very revealing in that humanity first came up with the idea of God to explain the events that occurred in nature.

Religions tend to destroy the insights that their founders had.

The world’s generosity has indeed been amazing, but sometimes we use our compassion as a self-enveloping fog to obscure our view of the abyss.

Our compassion it the only thing we have against the abyss.

[quote author=“Iisbliss”]The world’s generosity has indeed been amazing, but sometimes we use our compassion as a self-enveloping fog to obscure our view of the abyss.

Our compassion it the only thing we have against the abyss.

One thing that comes out in myths, for example, is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation.

The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come.

At the darkest moment comes the light.

-Joseph Campbell

My wife and I were in Vietnam at the time of the Tsunamis, and I asked our Buddhist guide how his religion viewed this disaster. He said that as a Buddhist he believes that we are responsible for coping with what is, and that he does not expect God to create a perfect world for us. The other side of the Buddhist faith, of course, is the belief in reincarnation and the striving for enlightenment (Nirvanah).

How did our western religious leaders comment on this disaster, many of whose victims were innocent children?

Hank O