Whenever you bring religion into a debate, it never helps, and both parties usually end up offended and frustrated. So when I read Dawkin’s paper, I admit I was skeptical, and I think I had a good reason to. Dawkin’s titled his paper, “Is Science a Religion”, however he barely brushes the topic and instead rants about how religion is bad and science is better. Now this is his opinion and I respect someones opinion even if I don’t agree with it. However the thing that ticked me off in his writing, was not his opinion, but that he grouped everyone of faith all into one category. Look at what he says here ”

“Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. And who, looking at
Northern Ireland or the Middle East, can be confident that the brain virus of faith is not exceedingly
dangerous? One of the stories told to the young Muslim suicide bombers is that martyrdom is the quickest
way to heaven — and not just heaven but a special part of heaven where they will receive their special
reward of 72 virgin brides.”

Maybe I’m overreacting some but that seems a bit overboard. If you are a suicide bomber, there are probably many other reasons you are blowing yourself up besides your religion. And as far as I know, there’s no passage in the Qur’an  saying that if you blow yourself up you go to a special heaven. Dawkin’s didn’t address the fact that its most likely the coordinator of the suicide bombers saying those things than the religion itself.

Now I am not religious myself, but many of my friends and family are.  And all of them, besides maybe a crazy aunt, believes in evolution, and uses science to explain how the world works.

TLDR: I don’t like how when people bring religion into arguements they group everyone of that faith together.

-Josh Wagner

Conspiracy?

I think many of us in the class are entering the role of a double agent. When we talked in class, it was apparent that most of us are going in the direction of math and science major’s slash professions. Yet everyone one gets into the discussions in class about humanities, and they’re not just simple discussions either. So I think that we are becoming a class of double agents, and whether this was by accident or planned by Carl Toews, I don’t know. Think about it.

I went into this class expecting the worse, I’m a comp sci major, I don’t need to write essays (I was frightened because the last real essay I’ve done was more than a year and a half ago) or read about the war between science and humanities. But it turned out that I have been enjoying this class and the entire topic, and I’m sure I’m not the only person who has thought this way.

But now onto the double agents. Someone, I don’t remember who, in class made a comment that all the authors we have have looked at that are identified as double agents are in fact scientists dabbling into humanities, never the other way around. I think thats a great point simply because its been true so far.  In fact most of the authors we have looked at so far in the semester have been primarily scientists dabbling  in humanities and not humanity writers dabbling into sciences. I don’t think this a huge problem, but it would help a bit to get the other side of the debate.

Morally Right?

If you ever need to persuade someone or sneak into a placen all you need is confidence and some props. When my dad was working on constructing a building, some of their trucks were stolen, during the day, in front of every. The theivesjust wore what you would expect at a construction site and showed pretended like they were supposed to be there. That’s basically what Sokal did. Except for clothes and props he had quotes and hard to understand terms. Most people trust figures who look like they know what they’re doing.
But was this right morally? Sokal talks about this in his response. He says that when someone reads from scholarly journals they trust the article to have correct information arguments. Sokal admits to breaking this trust. But also defends himself saying that all the quotes and works cited are 100 percent real and true. But isn’t that still morally wrong to trick not only the publishers but the readers? What do you guys think?

Temper Tantrums

So many people are comparing the authors to famous people (though different magnitudes of fame, and I have heard of Mynchon). Instead, the most obvious comparison between Hardy and someone I know is actually one of my high school friends.  Now that high school friend was a pessimist. And don’t get me wrong, I liked him and we were good friends, but he always found the worst of the situation.  Always complaining about this or that. Even if the situation was going almost perfectly, he would find something wrong with it or something that could go wrong with it and complain about it. Hardy reminds me of that old friend. I mean, Hardy even starts off right away saying “It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics.The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done.” (Hardy pg 1) A lot of people like branching out to other subjects, in fact we just read Sabato who switched from Physics to writings, and he seemed pretty content at what he was doing. And even though we haven’t gotten to the other authors yet, I expect they liked the change to.  Throughout his writing, Hardy complains, like saying that only five to ten percent of people are actually decent at something or listing off a large number of self proclaimed “useless” professions that no one should learn. It sounds likes he’s depressed and throwing a temper tantrum. But we do know he was depressed when he wrote this, so what can I say?

Where do Luddites fit? (Late post #2 due to technical difficulties

So this is the first time posting making an official blog post on this blog. (the first one being a long comment instead, my bad). And this is unlike me to do this homework this early in the day (I’m writing this at 6pm thursday night but couldn’t upload it due to technical difficulties)

I found the reading about the Luddites to be pretty interesting, even though it was a bit off topic. So far all of the readings have been about humanities versus science. Or to be more correct, responses to Snow’s lecture and responses to responses to the responses of Snow’s lectures. But a different yet similar article about luddites was refreshing. Pynchon’s writing is definitely higher quality than Leavis’ Snow’s or Trilling’s. I think part of that is most people like to read entertaining articles, and Pynchons article was pretty entertaining…At least compared to the rest.

And Pynchon’s writing made me think of an interesting question. What side of humanities versus science are luddites on? Surely they can’t be on the science side of the debate! But would they be on the humanities side? I don’t think they would either. Based on the examples from Pynchon’s writing, the luddites weren’t with humanities, but just against science. So I guess its more of a common enemy?