Another selection of powerful thoughts from philosopher AC Grayling’s The Form of Things. (See here for the previous post.)

Sympathy
[…] without opportunities for reflection, information in any quantity is valueless. A synoptic view is needed, a larger picture, a review of what has been acquired and learned – and concomitantly, of the extent and nature of our ignorance. The Greeks thought of the gods as having such a perspective, looking at the affairs of men from the peak of Olympus. ‘Olympian detachment’ might be possible for gods if there were such beings, but from the human perspective in the midst of the fray, such a view is a lot – and perhaps too much – to ask; the best we can do is to pause and take stock.

The History of Knowledge and Ignorance
An example is provided by the complex of sixteenth-century events which, for brevity, is called ‘the Reformation’. A large part of what drove these events was impatience with restraints on enquiry imposed by the Church. The Church taught that human reason is fallen and finite, and therefore that attempts to penetrate nature’s secrets are impious. But the Reformed sensibility saw reason as a divine gift, and believed that mankind had been set a challenge by God to read the ‘Great Book of the World’. There was also a school of thought in Christendom which believed that the world was given to man to expropriate at will – which meant that it was as open to the curiosity of the scientist as to the craft of the hunter or husbandman.

[…]

From the earliest times man has invented cosmogonies (theories of how the universe began) and cosmologies (theories of the ultimate nature of the universe). They are grand theories designed to make sense of the world, its past and the laws (or powers) that govern it; and they suggest ways of influencing or even controlling it (in those earlier times, by sacrifice and prayer). In this sense religions are primitive versions of science and technology. They aspire to offer explanations: to tell us who we are, why we are here, what we must do and where we are going. The growth of contemporary science conflicts with religion thus conceived, because it offers explanations of the same phenomena in wholly different ways.

[…]

Politically, human beings have advanced little from their long evolutionary history of conflict. They are still tribal, territorial and ready to kill one another for beliefs, and for control of goods and resources. Indeed, much of the world’s wealth and energy is poured into arms and armies for these very reasons. But the growth of knowledge has replaced the spear with the computer-guided nuclear missile. This mixture of stone-age politics and contemporary science is […] extraordinarily perilous.

Answering Critics
Two classes of my own critics cause me amusement rather than otherwise, for which I owe them gratitude. One consists in folk of a religious turn of mind, who are annoyed by my dislike of religion and my attacks upon it, on the grounds of its falsehood, its moralising oppressiveness and the terrible conflicts it has caused throughout history, and causes still. These critics call me dogmatic, narrow-minded, intolerant and unfair in what I say about their superstitions and the systems of moral tyranny erected upon them. Well: as experts in dogma and narrow-mindedness, they are doubtless in a good position to recognise it when they find it.

Moral Outrage
A mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable disease in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might offend some, who certainly have a right to complain; but they do not have a right to censor. They do not have to watch or listen if they are offended: they have an ‘off’ button on their television sets and radios. After all, it is morally outrageous that moral outrage should be used as an excuse to perpetrate the outrage of censorship on others.

Science and Modern Times
Everywhere that religion has ever held temporal power, the result has approximated Taliban-style rule. We forget, in the West, how much it took to escape orthodoxy enforced by burnings at the stake, and how recently: indeed, at the beginnings of modern times with the rise of science.

Faith Schools
Just two words state the objection to faith-based schools: ‘Northern Ireland’. The segregation of Catholic and Protestant school-children has been one of the major causes and sustainers of inter-community tensions in that troubled region. Why have the bitter lessons thus taught not been learned?

In the last few days I’ve been reading a philosophy book. “OMG what is this guy on? He reads philosophy – for fun!”

Well in truth it isn’t a very taxing philosophy book, because what I’ve been reading is The Form of Things by AC Grayling. Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London and writes regularly for a number of periodicals including my favoured New Scientist. He is also a literary journalist and a broadcaster. So he’s not just a thinker, but he writes well and in an intelligible style.

The Form of Things is a collection of short (mostly 2-3 pages) essays drawn from his recent journalistic writings. Its subtitle: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the 21st Century tells you precisely what it’s about. It ranges widely over subjects such as language, beauty, funerals, reflections on people, fox-hunting and ID cards. It is a book to dip into rather than read cover to cover; and that’s how I’ve approached it as each of the essays stands in its own right. Let me give you a few gems (the title of each piece is the essay from which it comes). Whether you agree with them or not, they should at least thought provoking…

Dance
At almost any exhibition of contemporary art the thought that crosses one’s mind is: Is this rubbish, or am I missing the point? One could take the view that most of it is indeed rubbish, but of a useful kind: for it takes a lot of compost to make a flower -and flower lovers live in hope. Cynics say that the problem is the existence of art colleges, where people spend their time gluing cereal boxes to bicycle tyres (conceptual art), or demand that people watch them doing it (performance art) …

Hedonism
Human history has been weighed down with ordinances of denial from those who claim to know what the gods want of us – which seems mainly to be that we should not enjoy ourselves, even though they have given us natures attuned to pleasure.

God and the European Constitution
No one has ever fought a war because of disagreements in geology or botany; but humanity has bled to death over the question of whether a wafer of bread becomes human flesh when a priest whispers incantations over it. This stark contrast needs to be taken seriously; for until it is, we condemn ourselves to repeat the futile quarrels of the past.

Humanism and Religion
Religious folk try to turn the tables on people of a naturalistic and humanistic outlook by charging them with ‘faith’ in science or ‘faith’ in reason. Faith, they seem to have forgotten, is what you have in the face of facts and reason […] No such thing is required to ‘believe in’ science or reason. Science is always open to challenge and refutation, faith is not; reason must be rigorously tested by its own lights, faith rejoices in unreason. Once again, a humanistic outlook is as far from sharing the characteristics of religion as it can be. By definition, in short, humanism is not religion, any more than religion is or can be a form of humanism.

Rochester and the Libertines
The word ‘libertine’ was first applied in the 1550s to a sect of Protestants in northern Europe who, with unimpeachable logic, reasoned that since God had ordained all things, nothing could be sinful. They proceeded to act accordingly. Their views were regarded with horror by both Catholics on one side and Calvinists on the other…

Free Speech
It should by now be a commonplace, though alas it is not, that the right response to attempts by violent enemies to coerce our society is to reassert the very liberties and values that make them attack us in the first place. To restrict ourselves out of fear of what they might do is to give them the victory they seek. If they were able to impose their will on our society, they would deprive us of many of the liberties distinctive of a Western democracy. Why do it to ourselves?

Maybe more later.