SJ Intro, 1-2 [Beginning with chapter 2, I'll limit my questions to the first half of longer chapters. I encourage you to supplement them with questions from the latter halves.]
1. What conviction rooted in Enlightenment philosophy have all freethinkers shared?
2. Insistence on what distinction separates secularists from "the religiously correct"?
3. Why was Elizabeth Cady Stanton censured by her fellow suffragists?
4. What made room for freethought in colonial America?
5. Whose interests coincided and coalesced in common support for separation of church and state?
6. How must "the religiously correct" explain the Constitution's omission of God?
7. Of what is the shunning of Tom Paine paradigmatic?
8. What changed in America between 1787 and 1797?
9. What did Jefferson say about the legitimate powers of government, with respect to belief in a god or gods? And what did his critic John Mason say about that?
10. What French names became "a kind of shorthand for freethought and deism" in America?
11. How did Universalism contradict Calvinism?
DQ
- Are Enlightenment values overly scientistic? (Have you seen the backlash against Steven Pinker's new Enlightenment Now? See below, for instance.*)
- Should private faith be kept apart from public discourse?
- Should progressive movements on behalf of traditionally-marginalized groups make a greater effort to coalesce with one another, despite lesser differences?
- Why are fundamentalists and their political advocates so successful in persuading the public that America was intended by its founders to be "a Christian nation"?
- How can the separation of church and state be effectively reinstated, among the broad misinformed electorate?
- Did the founders "forget" to include God in the Constitution?
- Could a politician in America today say what Jefferson said about the harmlessness of varieties of religious AND irreligious opinion?
Quiz Mar 1 SJ 3-4
1. In what way did New England and the Deep South trade places in the first half of the 19th century?
2. What was the "utilitarian justification for slavery"?
3. How have women's rights movements generally been seen, historically?
4. About what are contemporary religious conservatives mistaken?
5. How did William Lloyd Garrison say the Bible should be judged?
6. How did the Grimke sisters shock their most radical coreligionists?
7. Who were Garrison's heroes of conscience?
8. What was Lucretia Mott's motto?
9. [ch4] What words did not appear in the earliest drafts of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?
10. How have Lincoln's views been variously described, over the years?
11. In Lincoln's day the word "unbelief" connoted what?
12. In his 2d inaugural address Lincoln spoke not as a theologian or saint but as a what, in Jacoby's judgment?
DQ
2. What was the "utilitarian justification for slavery"?
3. How have women's rights movements generally been seen, historically?
4. About what are contemporary religious conservatives mistaken?
5. How did William Lloyd Garrison say the Bible should be judged?
6. How did the Grimke sisters shock their most radical coreligionists?
7. Who were Garrison's heroes of conscience?
8. What was Lucretia Mott's motto?
9. [ch4] What words did not appear in the earliest drafts of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?
10. How have Lincoln's views been variously described, over the years?
11. In Lincoln's day the word "unbelief" connoted what?
12. In his 2d inaugural address Lincoln spoke not as a theologian or saint but as a what, in Jacoby's judgment?
DQ
- Is the New South slowly returning to a pre-19th century ethos and state of mind, or has its transformation to entrenched conservatism become too ingrained?
- Do many people of your acquaintance defend the social status quo as somehow divinely ordained, or in some other way necessary and beyond our control?
- Is the current #MeToo movement similar to previous pushes for gender equality, or is it qualitatively different? How do you think it is, and will be, viewed by religious orthodoxy?
- Are Enlightenment values overrated in our society? Can you enumerate and rank them?
- Should any text be considered sacred and unimpeachable?
- Who are your heroes of conscience?
- Would "under God" and "in God we trust" (etc.) be removed from our official discourse, currency, etc., if we were truly committed as a nation to religious freedom? Does the recent controversy surrounding confederate statues and iconography make it any likelier that that might happen?
- Do you think we've had any closeted atheists in the White House?
- Do so many want to claim Lincoln as a co-religionist because they cannot imagine a "good and merciful" non-believer?
- COMMENT: "If these [savage guerrilla warriors] were typical Christians, could Christianity truly be termed good?" 122-3
Steven Pinker Wants You to Know Humanity Is Doing Fine. Just Don’t Ask About Individual Humans.
Steven Pinker doesn’t just want you to be happy; he wants you to be grateful too. His new book, “Enlightenment Now,” is a spirited and exasperated rebuke to anyone who refuses to concede that the world is becoming a better place. “None of us are as happy as we ought to be, given how amazing our world has become,” he writes. “People seem to bitch, moan, whine, carp and kvetch as much as ever.”
In the United States, this spectacular ingratitude is lamentably bipartisan, he says, shared by anti-establishmentarians on both sides who refuse to see the light: “Left-wing and right-wing political ideologies have themselves become secular religions, providing people with a community of like-minded brethren, a catechism of sacred beliefs, a well-populated demonology and a beatific confidence in the righteousness of their cause.” Of course, Pinker’s confidence in the righteousness of his own cause may come across as similarly beatific (he’s an atheist who’s confident enough to use the word “blessed” without a hint of irony), but as he repeatedly tells us, the evidence is on his side. Scientific discovery and technological developments have ensured that “everything is amazing.” He’s merely expounding the obvious.
Not so obvious, though, that he didn’t need to write a 550-page book to make his case. Pinker is a scientist — a psychologist, to be exact — and he prides himself on being thorough, valiantly fighting “progressophobia” with his voluble sentences and a fusillade of data. When he published “The Better Angels of Our Nature” in 2011, he believed he unequivocally showed that modernity and liberal Enlightenment values had made people less violent, and so he was taken aback by skeptical reviews that had the temerity to question his research methods or his conclusions.
“I had thought that a parade of graphs with time on the horizontal axis, body counts or other measures of violence on the vertical, and a line that meandered from the top left to the bottom right would cure audiences” of their delusions and “persuade them that at least in this sphere of well-being the world has made progress,” he recalls near the beginning of “Enlightenment Now.” But Pinker’s inability to “cure audiences” and “persuade them” doesn’t mean he has reconsidered his rhetorical approach; 300 pages after bemoaning those poor souls who read “Better Angels” and weren’t bowled over by his panoply of statistics, Pinker doubles down with still more data. “We have seen six dozen graphs that have vindicated the hope for progress by charting the ways in which the world has been getting better,” he writes... (continues)
==
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason... gr...
“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
In the United States, this spectacular ingratitude is lamentably bipartisan, he says, shared by anti-establishmentarians on both sides who refuse to see the light: “Left-wing and right-wing political ideologies have themselves become secular religions, providing people with a community of like-minded brethren, a catechism of sacred beliefs, a well-populated demonology and a beatific confidence in the righteousness of their cause.” Of course, Pinker’s confidence in the righteousness of his own cause may come across as similarly beatific (he’s an atheist who’s confident enough to use the word “blessed” without a hint of irony), but as he repeatedly tells us, the evidence is on his side. Scientific discovery and technological developments have ensured that “everything is amazing.” He’s merely expounding the obvious.
Not so obvious, though, that he didn’t need to write a 550-page book to make his case. Pinker is a scientist — a psychologist, to be exact — and he prides himself on being thorough, valiantly fighting “progressophobia” with his voluble sentences and a fusillade of data. When he published “The Better Angels of Our Nature” in 2011, he believed he unequivocally showed that modernity and liberal Enlightenment values had made people less violent, and so he was taken aback by skeptical reviews that had the temerity to question his research methods or his conclusions.
“I had thought that a parade of graphs with time on the horizontal axis, body counts or other measures of violence on the vertical, and a line that meandered from the top left to the bottom right would cure audiences” of their delusions and “persuade them that at least in this sphere of well-being the world has made progress,” he recalls near the beginning of “Enlightenment Now.” But Pinker’s inability to “cure audiences” and “persuade them” doesn’t mean he has reconsidered his rhetorical approach; 300 pages after bemoaning those poor souls who read “Better Angels” and weren’t bowled over by his panoply of statistics, Pinker doubles down with still more data. “We have seen six dozen graphs that have vindicated the hope for progress by charting the ways in which the world has been getting better,” he writes... (continues)
==
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason... gr...
“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
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