[P2P-F] Spirituality and the internet

[Michel Bauwens]

Referring to the article by Poor Richard that ends with a video of Dawkins,

this quote expresses quite well my misgivings about these type of
'fundamentalist-secularist' approaches, when they have to deal with
different cultures and approaches:

Chris Knight:

"Evolutionary psychologists, while presenting themselves as cautious
scholars on their home ground, respond by parodying politically backward
stereotypes when on the rampage outside their specialist domains. This is
true not only of the self-professed racists and reactionaries. Not even
Darwinism’s liberals can resist the knockabout fun and games. Take, for
example, Pinker (p. 305) on ‘shamanism’ – a topic properly considered within
social anthropology. Ignoring the vast scholarly literature on this
fascinating theme, he explains the phenomenon as follows: ‘Tribal shamans
are flim-flam artists who supplement their considerable practical knowledge
with stage magic, drug-induced trances, and other cheap tricks’.

The belief systems of preliterate peoples – their view, for example, that
certain anthropomorphized principles are ‘sacred’ – are demoted to the
status of hoaxes. Where constructs diverge from ‘the real world’, they must
be quackery. On this issue as most others, Pinker is joined by Dawkins
(1993), for whom religion of any kind is a computer bug – a cultural virus
malevolently introduced to parasitize gullible minds. To social anthropology
as a profession – I need hardly stress – such doctrinaire verdicts on the
subject of * other peoples’ beliefs * are interesting only as an example of
western folk-prejudice, not scholarship or science."

(http://p2pfoundation.net/Culture_in_Mind)


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