Author: jdtabor

Koestler on “the Convert”

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Koestler introspectively captures his own experience and lays out a psychological “pattern” that operates in both individuals and groups.  Dogmatic thought systems of all types–religious, political, social–fueled most often by charismatic leaders–become attractive to those seeking such “certainties.” The critical mind is our only defense. To quote a phrase: There is more “faith” in honest doubt than half the creeds. Tennyson.

 

Something clicked in my brain that shook me like a mental explosion. To say that one had ‘seen the light’ is a poor description of the mental rapture which only the convert knows. The new light seems to pour across the skull; the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke. There is now an answer to every question, doubts and conflicts are a matter of the tortured past—a past already remote, when one had lived in dismal ignorance in the tasteless, colorless world of those who don’t know.” Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue, pp. 236-237.

 

Remembering Jonathan Z. Smith

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Quintessential JZ Smith…if you never had the pleasure of hearing him…his Plenary Address to the American Academy of Religion in 2010.

You can read an informal fascinating interview with Mr. Smith (as Chicago professors are called–no titles please!) published in The Chicago Maroon in 2008 here. Don’t miss this one!

Mr. Smith’s published books are available on Amazon, with an author’s page here. Each is a collection of essays gathered around a theme or stage in his unfolding thinking about “Religion” over four decades.

A collection of essays on Smith’s work and contributions to the field: Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith, edited by by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon.

 

Jonathan Z. Smith has Died

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Well Socrates…but How shall we bury you? However you please, he replied, if you can catch me and I do not get away from you. And he laughed gently.”

A sad day for so many of us who loved Jonathan Z. Smith as a teacher and friend. There was no one to match him and likely won’t ever be again. For all of us a light has gone out. Not a lot to say other than what Elaine, his wife, has released to the newspapers. I will let this suffice for now, and JZ Smith, true to his spirit, wanted no memorial or service. For those who knew and loved him this photo captures it all.

SMITH–Jonathan Z., passed away on December 30, 2017. He was the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Professor Smith received his PhD from Yale, in Religious Studies, in 1969. In 2013, Smith was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Membership in the International Association for the History of Religions. “Smith’s enormous contributions to the field from the 1960s to the present,” the citation read, “have unwaveringly insisted upon, and been exemplary of, methodological rigor and self consciousness. He has probably done more than any single scholar to promote an analytic or critical approach to the study of religion.”

He is the author of numerous works, including Map Is Not Territory, Imagining Religion, and To Take Place. He was also the editor of The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. Smith joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1968 and remained there his entire career. From 1973 to 1982 he assumed administrative responsibilities and served as associate dean and then dean of the college.

He is survived by his loving wife, Elaine B. Smith, his daughter, Siobhan Smith, son Jason Smith, Rachel Weaver, his granddaughter, Hazel van Wijk, and sister, Pam Hanson.

Can All Religions Be True?

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Here is a segment from my various interviews with Dr. Robert Kuhn on his award-winning PBS program Closer to Truth. I am asked to address here the question “Can Different Religions All Be True?” You can view this and other interviews with me and a host of other historians, theologians, philosophers, physicists, psychologists, mathematicians, and biologists on the “Big Questions” of Cosmos, Mind, and God.

Why Insult the Animals?

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Why compare terrorists to “animals”? It seems to me to be quite an insult to our furry friends, even the predators, who hunt for food but never approach our crazy human carnage, racism, cultural biases, baseless hatred, corruption and mendacity. Homo Sapiens are the shameful species, now bent on destroying our very planet, much less one another. Who could count the suffering and senseless deaths human against human? It is incalculable. And we have just about wiped out those predator “animals” we like to use as an example of “evil,” to boot. I think our species could better be named Home Stultus.

Can Human Brain Consciousness be Replicated?

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Robert Kuhn, an old friend, colleague, and producer of the amazing PBS program “Closer to Truth,” (see my own contributions here) has a most provocative piece at LiveScience titled: “The Singularity, Virtual Immortality and the Trouble with Consciousness.” Will science replicate the human brain and thus produce the phenomenon we all experience our conscious “inner-self,”–what Plato and Freud called the “Ego”?

According to techno-futurists, the exponential development of technology in general and artificial intelligence (“AI”) in particular — including the complete digital replication of human brains — will radically transform humanity via two revolutions. The first is the “singularity,” when artificial intelligence will redesign itself recursively and progressively, such that AI will become vastly more powerful than human intelligence (“superstrong AI”). The second revolution will be “virtual immortality,” when the fullness of our mental selves can be uploaded perfectly to nonbiological media (such as silicon chips), and our mental selves will live on beyond the demise of our fleshy, physical bodies.

AI singularity and virtual immortality would mark a startling, transhuman world that techno-futurists envision as inevitable and perhaps just over the horizon. They do not question whether their vision can be actualized; they only debate when will it occur, with estimates ranging from 10 to 100 years. [Artificial Intelligence: Friendly or Frightening?]

Continue reading “Can Human Brain Consciousness be Replicated?” →

The End of All Things Is At Hand–Not From Heaven but On Earth

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Is it not ironic that it might well turn out that we, the species who longs for a dramatic “end of all things at hand” ends up bringing it about through our own mismanagement of our good earth and its abundant resources. “Tending the garden” is fine but we have unleashed such disruption we well might be past the tipping point. Joseph Romm’s new book, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, is the best I have seen in terms of a readable “just the facts please” report. And he largely leaves out factory farming, and methane gas, and deforestation in the Amazon, which some argue is a larger factor than our burning of fossil fuels–see the film “Cowspiracy” (it is on Netflix) and you will never think the same about eating meat that is so produced.