Number 94
I picked up a copy of Free Inquiry, a magazine that's been around a while but which I'd never read before; a couple of articles and writers on the cover piqued my interest. The magazine is published by The Council for Secular Humanism, and its subtitle is "Celebrating Reason and Humanity." All these ~ celebration, reason, and humanity ~ are desirable items, but I learned that in this magazine "reason" and "humanity" do not mean simply what I always thought they did. Beyond their common or literary uses, they have specialized meanings of which I was unaware; they're sort of code words, like so many political words, for a political / philosophical stance, in this case, actively anti-religious. "Humanist" is a word that stands in opposition to "deist" or any other word identifying a person of religious belief. It's not simply, as I had vaguely thought, someone who values human beings. (By the way, I also just learned, or at least read, the words "scientism" and "historicism" recently.)
One letter to the editor (October/November 2004, page 57), from Bill Hahm of Illinois, referred to a previous article called "What Use Is Religion?" Mr. Hahm refers to the idea ~ another one new to me ~ that religion is a "mind virus," and the discussion here suggests that religion is considered a formerly useful virus that is no longer useful. But what really stopped me in my reading tracks was his "half-serious, half-humorous prediction" that "religious belief will increase with intelligence because intelligence is a measure of the ability to remember what is taught (hence the paradox of the deeply religious intelligent person)." I was shocked because I realized that there were times when I thought something rather close to this: if a person held beliefs that I didn't, political or religious, I seriously questioned her or his basic intelligence. I'm sorry, but there it is. I confess. I know better now. Anyway, I value intelligence somewhat less than I used to, at least compared to some other things.
One of my sons brought to my attention another instance of (a) the supposed oxymoron, such as a "religious intelligent person," and (b) the way a specialized definition changes meaning: "secret evidence" is being used to detain suspected terrorists. Says son, "evidence" is something that's "evident," so how can it be secret? Good question. I don't know, except to say that "evidence" has a legal sense. Maybe some of you lawyers out there can elucidate this for us.
The current issue of Free Inquiry also carries an article by Katherine M. Rogers on "The Humanism of L. Frank Baum" (author of The Wizard of Oz, etc.) Here, "humanism" must be remembered in its official "secular humanism" sense. (By the way, a list of humanist affirmations, principles, deplorations, skepticisms, etc., is on the inside front cover; you can order a parchment copy suitable for framing and recitation.) Ms. Rogers didn't mention, and probably doesn't know of, the editorials Baum wrote in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in 1890 and 1891, following the battle of Wounded Knee and the death of Sitting Bull. Here are a couple of excerpts:
"With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism."We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America."
"The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."
Baum might have benefited from a few touches of irrational religion.
This is not to say that all those who consider themselves secular humanists are as vicious as Baum, but I thought I'd apply the magazine's own methods of attack.
Trader Joe's used to (and maybe still does) carry its own brand of raisin bread called "The Age of Raisin".
A comment from Mike Sykes:
"Re the multiplicity of languages, AWADmail [A Word a Day] Issue 138 contains the following quote:"'You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.' ~ Ronald Searle, artist"I remember this thought dawning on me early on in my computing career, when, after cutting my programming teeth on machine language, I learned successively Cobol, PL/I and APL. It hadn't struck me quite so hard when I learned Latin and French at school, perhaps because, to such a large extent, English has a lot of French in it and French has a lot of Latin.
"This does not mean that I'm in favour of a multiplicity of 'official' languages, by the way. The EU has a plethora; it wouldn't surprise me if interpreters soaked up most of the budget before long."
Thanks for reminding me of the brilliant Ronald Searle, Mike. Searle reminds me a bit of the late William Steig (I have his book, Strutters and Fretters), and Richard Stine (though Stine is sweeter).
Discovery School online lets you construct word puzzles in several formats, using your own list of words. This can be a fun project for kids, or you could use it make a novel, customized greeting card puzzle or advertisement.
Speaking of word puzzles, it seems to me that the puzzle magazines are becoming lax. I sometimes recommend to my students (American and foreign) that they work crossword and other word puzzles to help their spelling and increase their vocabulary, but I'm not so sure anymore. Definitions, even if accurate, can be very narrow, and anyway aren't always perfectly accurate. As for spelling, in one puzzle the answer to the clue "tool" is "vice grips". Sounds like the jaws of life for, say, prying teenagers out of a car.
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