Áhugaverðar vangaveltur um uppruna trúarbragðanna

Reexamining Religion

Pervez Hoodbhoy is a well-known physicist who teaches at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. He is also well-known for his frequent and intelligent interventions in politics. In an article entitled Miracles, Wars, and Politics he writes:

PervezOn the morning of the first Gulf War (1991), having just heard the news of the US attack on Baghdad, I walked into my office in the physics department in a state of numbness and depression. Mass death and devastation would surely follow. I was dismayed, but not surprised, to discover my PhD student, a militant activist of the Jamaat-i-Islami’s student wing in Islamabad, in a state of euphoria. Islam’s victory, he said, is inevitable because God is on our side and the Americans cannot survive without alcohol and women. He reasoned that neither would be available in Iraq, and happily concluded that the Americans were doomed. Then he reverentially closed his eyes and thrice repeated "Inshallah" (if Allah so wills).

The utter annihilation of Saddam Hussein's army by the Americans which soon followed, did little, of course, to attenuate this student's convictions. (Also, it is mildly interesting that Muslim conceptions of heaven focus so much on precisely the easy availability of alcohol and women.) Constantly confronted by such attitudes, atheists such as myself are often driven to hair-pulling exasperation by the seeming irrationality of religious belief, and specifically its immunity to refutation by experience, logic, argument, or it seems, anything else.

Þessa grein er vel þess virði að lesa. Fólki er líka óhætt að skella þessum hlekk (3 Quarks Daily) í bókamerkin sín, oftar en ekki eitthvað skemmtilegt og fræðandi þarna að finna.