Green Energy

Socrates or Muhammad?

Lee Harris has delivered in the October 2, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard, an exceptionally complete analysis on the issue of Western Civilization and its self-insecurity.

Some extracts:

"Modern reason argues that questions of ethics, of religion, and of God are outside its compass. Because there is no scientific method by which such questions can be answered, modern reason cannot concern itself with them, nor should it try to. From the point of view of modern reason, all religious faiths are equally irrational, all systems of ethics equally unverifiable, all concepts of God equally beyond rational criticism. But if this is the case, then what can modern reason say when it is confronted by a God who commands that his followers should use violence and even the threat of death in order to convert unbelievers?

If modern reason cannot concern itself with the question of God, then it cannot argue that a God who commands jihad is better or worse than a God who commands us not to use violence to impose our religious views on others. To the modern atheist, both Gods are equally figments of the imagination, in which case it would be ludicrous to discuss their relative merits. The proponent of modern reason, therefore, could not possibly think of participating in a dialogue on whether Christianity or Islam is the more reasonable religion, since, for him, the very notion of a "reasonable religion" is a contradiction in terms."

and this

"Modern science cannot tell us that the emperor is right in his controversy with the learned Persian over what is or is not contrary to God's nature. Modern reason proclaims such questions unanswerable by science--and it is right to do so. But can modern reason hope to survive as reason at all if it insists on reducing the domain of reasonable inquiry to the sphere of scientific inquiry? If modern reason cannot take the side of the emperor in this debate, if it cannot see that his religion is more reasonable than the religion of those who preach and practice jihad, if it cannot condemn as unreasonable a religion that forces atheists and unbelievers to make a choice between their intellectual integrity and death, then modern reason may be modern, but it has ceased to be reason."

and this

"Modern reason says that all ethical choices are subjective and beyond the scope of reason. But if this is so, then a man who wishes to live in a community made up of reasonable men is simply making a personal subjective choice--a choice that is no more reasonable than the choice of the man who wishes to live in a community governed by brute force. But if the reasonable man is reasonable, he must recognize that modern reason itself can only survive in a community made up of other reasonable men. Since to be a reasonable man entails wishing to live in a community made up of other reasonable men, then the reasonable man cannot afford to allow the choice between reason and violence to be left up to mere personal taste or intellectual caprice. To do so would be a betrayal of reason."

I have already ordered this author's Civilization and Its Enemies from Amazon, just after reading this essay.

- Islam Is Fragile
One of my recent pieces at Jihad Watch was about a new Orwellian-named government unit here in Malaysia, namely something called a 'Faith Rescue Unit'. After the Malaysian authorities learned that there was a handful of Muslims (11 out of more...

- From Vatican Reporter:
At least one writer for Catholic press out of the Vatican is now saying that Pope Benedict XVI has no intention of backing down from his call for dialogue. This after another Vatican insider reportedly said that the Pope's reference to a dialogue...

- Reason Vs. Power
Christopher Chantrill has written the best essay I have so far on the battle over Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam. Here's an excerpt: ... it is clear from the events of the last week that dhimmitude is here right now. I’d never had much...

- Newt Takes The Lead
Newt is way ahead of the pack. “In the United States, we refer to this struggle as the "Global War on Terror". Yet, I believe this label fails to capture the nature and scale of the threat faced by civilization. The nature of the threat -- with...

- The Rebellion Against Reason
From The Brussels Journal and it's excellent: Arguably, the success of Western Civilization and of its derivates can be attributed to the triumph of reason over irrationality in the course of its development. This process had its modest beginnings...

Green Energy