Le Guin on Rushdie and religion 1 Apr 2008 David Williams sent me this snippet of Ursula Le Guins’ review of Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel: Some boast that science has ousted the incomprehensible; others cry that science has driven magic out of the world and plead for “re-enchantment”. But it’s clear that Charles Darwin lived in as wondrous a world, as full of discoveries, amazements and profound mysteries, as that of any fantasist. The people who disenchant the world are not the scientists, but those who see it as meaningless in itself, a machine operated by a deity. Science and literary fantasy would seem to be intellectually incompatible, yet both describe the world; the imagination functions actively in both modes, seeking meaning, and wins intellectual consent through strict attention to detail and coherence of thought, whether one is describing a beetle or an enchantress. Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. So the true believer must condemn both Darwin and Rushdie as “disobedient, irreverent, iconoclastic” dissidents from revealed truth. Evolution Sermon
Evolution No dino pee 5 Jun 2009 Tom Holtz, palentologist at the University of Maryland, gives a guarded review for Land of the Lost at National Geographic‘s website. The summary? No pee, but feathers. Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Dembski can’t weasel out of this one 19 Mar 2009 Ian Musgrave has a brilliant post showing that Dembski’s revisiting of the old creationist canard that Dawkins’ 1984 Weasel program, designed to show that random variation and selective retention can “evolve” a target phrase, in this case Shakespeare’s “Methinks it is a weasel” (oops; I nearly had my own mutation… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity The constancy of change and the lack of balance 16 Sep 2007 All the strangers look like family All the family looks so strange The only constant I am sure of Is this accelerating rate of change — Peter Gabriel, Downside-Up, from the Ovo Album Creek Running North has a delightful rumination on the lack of a balance of nature, in which… Read More
It takes a writer…. How wonderful to recognize the common ground of curiosity and imagination between science and fantasy, and to recognize also how invidious a doctrinaire religion (or to be fair, any dogmatic belief that excludes the quest for further knowledge) is to these.
Small wonder that many of us geeks are both scientists and fans of fantasy and science fiction. That also explains the hatred of fundamentalists towards science and Harry Potter (they aren’t likely to be exposed to a better quality of fantasy, or SF).
Small wonder that many of us geeks are both scientists and fans of fantasy and science fiction. That also explains the hatred of fundamentalists towards science and Harry Potter (they aren’t likely to be exposed to a better quality of fantasy, or SF).
Ursula Le Guins deserves to be in the same class as Zelazny(? spelling) Clark, Bradbury, and Asimov. I love her sense of fantasy and her intelligence, but most of all, her understanding of human beings and her talent for story telling.
Ursula Le Guins deserves to be in the same class as Zelazny(? spelling) Clark, Bradbury, and Asimov. I love her sense of fantasy and her intelligence, but most of all, her understanding of human beings and her talent for story telling.
Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. This is false, at least in the sense that religion eschews imagination. Faith requires an element of human fantasy. What religion tends to proscribe is the use of imagination along independent lines.
Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. This is false, at least in the sense that religion eschews imagination. Faith requires an element of human fantasy. What religion tends to proscribe is the use of imagination along independent lines.
Yeah, Ursula K. Le Guin demonstrates degrees of insight that I admire. To me she seems not just smart, but wise. Tim, have you read Le Guin’s relatively recent book, Changing Planes? Her talent for telling stories that demonstrate a deep understanding of human beings really shines in that one, I thought. Cheers