It borders on irresponsibility in today’s world for Harvard University to not understand why it’s important for its students to take at least one course in Reason and Faith, and ideally more.

Maybe unintentionally (or not) arrogant is a better word than obnoxious in describing the Harvard attitude.

To pursue a career in international business, diplomacy or anthropology —to name three examples — without an understanding of the history of the world’s religions, and their endless battles for supremacy over each other, leaves Harvard graduates potentially clueless about what’s really going on in the world.

The faulty element in Ivy League thinking is the assumption that reasoning delivers an ultimate intelligence that triumphs over religion, perhaps as man triumps over nature.

If the 21st century is teaching us anything, it’s that man’s triumph over all that is female, whether it’s nature or woman, is failing.

In this last year of intense expansion of content at Anne of Carversville, my personal reimmersion in women’s rights in America and internationally, and a daily look at global terror, war and violence, I’m clear that religion is the most important influence on global history and current events.

No amount of reason will suppress the importance and primacy of religion in the values, allegiances and actions among the people of the world. To understand the history of the world’s religions and its massive role in geopolitics should be a prerequisite for anyone wanting to work in global markets.

Harvard professor Steven Pinker, the evolutionary psychologist, argues that including faith in the Harvard curriculum makes reason and faith equal parts to truth.

“I very, very, very much do not want to go on the record as suggesting that people should not know about religion,” he (Steven Pinker) told me (Newsweek). “But reason and faith are not yin and yang. Faith is a phenomenon. Reason is what the university should be in the business of fostering.”

In Pinker’s view, human progress is an evolution away from superstition, witchcraft, and idol worship—that is, religion—and toward something like a Scandinavian austerity and secularism… . A university education is our greatest weapon in the battle against our natural stupidity, he said in a recent speech. “We don’t kill virgins on an altar, because we know that it would not, in fact, propitiate an angry god and alleviate misfortune on earth.” via Newsweek

Reason is not operating in America today, locked as we are in shouting matches and chaotic governmental gridlock. We can speak of Republicans and Democrats, but the real battle in America involves whether or not laws and governance will be determined by the Bible.

I try not to be the close-minded New Yorker and my recommendation is that the East coast/West coast intellectual elite had better listen up and start engaging in civic conversation about the role of religion in American life and in the world.

Admittedly, I paused reading the proposed language in the bill that passed Utah’s House of Representatives about global warming. This doesn’t read like the verbiage I remember in civics class. And yet, it represents the views of the citizens of Utah and probably many other states in the country.

The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a “well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate “tricks” related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome”. It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a “gravy train” and their efforts would “ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty”.
In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion. via The Guardian

While Professor Pinker operates on the assumption that man’s (human) intellect triumphs in reason, there are profound problems with our research on global warming, even if the comments by Mike Noel scare the heck out of me.

Our Greentracker view is that the research has been linear thinking and fraught with an inability to work with a holistic, interactive model called the environment. While Mike Noel cries a vast conspiracy, I believe that reason has failed us in the form of linear thinking and the fact that 65% of us will not entertain new information or reasonging on a subject, because our minds are closed to new inputs.

Research on the plasticity of the mind to process new thoughts also argues that the Conservative mind has less receptivity to new learning. This research was done using brain scans and showed remarkably different patterns in the brains of humans, based on political identification.

Presumably, similar results would apply to our approach to religion and spirituality. It’s this determination among strongly religous people to view the future of civilization only as one in which THE ONE religion (theirs) triumphs, that has us all killing each other, in my view.

Note, my daily tracking of terrorism emphasizes my great concern about this issue. I do believe in bad guys.

Note that the Conservative response to the brain scan research wasn’t to disput it, but to agree that science confirmed that Conservatives are steadfast to their vision, while liberals are spinless Americans with no lasting values.

In my view, one group is eager to learn what archaeologists are learning about life at the time of Christ, Muhammad and the other group says that all important knowledge is included in the scriptures of Paul, The Torah, and Shariah law. In all cases, women are called upon to be obedient, as this is the natural order of life.

Newsweek’s Why Harvard Students Should Study More Religion is an excellent coupling with today’s NYTimes Magazine article How Christian Were the Founders? It’s a long read and you can begin in the middle, if your online time is limited.

The first part of the article discusses the paramount influence of the Texas board of education in dictating the explanation of history in America’s text books.

Setting aside huge concerns that one state in America is driving the determination of content in our public schools nationwide, I frankly have no problem that Phyllis Schlafly is deemed worthy of inclusion in the annals of textbook history.

I do have a problem that Schlafly is voted into the textbooks and Ted Kennedy is canned. Forgive me, but that’s very scarry. I can’t fathom the logic where Newt Gingrich is ‘in’ and Ted Kennedy is ‘out’.

While Professor Pinker and Harvard and other esteemed institutions in America argue that religion has no place in elite education, religion exerts its profound influences on the world’s peoples.

Trying to choose my words carefully, my concern is that the future of America not be driven by two options: a Fundamentalist Christian vision, whether Catholic or Southern Baptist, that seeks to make Jesus the director general of American government and secondly, the rationalists, who argue that spiritual discourse has no place in enlightened government.

From a women’s perspective, I’ve dealt with countless Muslim women who argue that today’s Islam is not the religion of Mohammed. It’s men who have rewritten the Quran to favor their own superiority and power over women, say these Muslim women.

The Quran didn’t put women in burqas; men did.

Scholars are working diligently on many fronts to unearth a vision of religion at the time of Jesus that was much less oppressive for women than much religion is today. Presumably, these archaeological discoveries are viewed as a new conspiracy of some kind in the battle that protects the patriarchy.

Steeped in the Lubna Hussein cases this summer, where a woman was about to be flogged for wearing loose pants in Khartoum, I was caught totally off guard when weeks latr, the President of Zambia, a Christian nation, hauled another journalist into court because she tried to save dying babies by forwarding on to the health minister graphic photos sent to her.

Searching for understandings of the situation, I admit being unable to process the rational logic of either case.

Chansa Kabwela was on trial for pornography, because as President Rupiah Banda says in today’s Lusaka Times, the influence of Christianity’s values is paramount in his country:

Catholic Bishops have a divine obligation to comment on issues of national importance because they were shepherds of the people.
President Banda said Catholic Bishops, through the Zambia Episcopal Conference (ZEC), were free to encourage government to perform better.
Mr. Banda explained that government was ready to listen to the church especially on constructive issues which were healthy to the development of the nation. via Lusaka Times

Luckily, the charges against Chansa Kabwela were dropped, and to be fair to President on the above quote, he doesn’t say that bishops rule under every situation. Presumably there’s still room for Zambia to make some laws apart from Rome.

The influence of the Catholic Bishops in negotiating American health care policy has been paramount. Literally, Nancy Pelosi was on the phone with the Vatican with representatives of American bishops in her office.

Clearly, Southern Baptists and Catholics don’t agree on every issue. They do agree in a shared vision that America must stop defining itself as a secular country.

People around the world feel passionately about the role of religion in their lives and their governments. The importance of spirituality in our lives is well-documented.

The critical need for moderate citizens — those of us with spongier brains — to engage in discussions about the place of religion in our lives and in our governments is imperative in the next decades.

Professor Pinker is an ostrich with his head in the sand with his belief that Harvard students shouldn’t be educated about reason, religion, divine design and all the core beliefs driving the daily lives of the world’s peoples.

Knowledge of every kind is power, not a liability or a waste of time. How do I reason with someone I disagree with, if I don’t understand the formulation of his or her ideas?

Given the commitment of Conservative Christianity, Orthodox Judaism and Radical Islam to the primacy of men, this is one woman who believes we all should engage in dialogue about the role of religion in our civic affairs.

The future of women depends on it.

In my view, the 21st century isn’t a slam-dunk for women, as so many pundits write. In America, where women occupy a mere 16% of Congressional seats and no significant role in either of our two major religions, men rule.

Perhaps God has a more collective vision for the planet, one where women actually lead and not just follow and where people of every religion work towards the goal of living together, in the tradition of India, which has thrived at times with multiple religions not only coexisting but positively cross-fertilizing each tother.

Who is working on that idea? Perhaps Harvard could take on that initiative as an alternative to current visions that demand there be only one winner in the future of the world. Anne

Update

on 2010-02-15 13:42 by Anne

Are science and atheism compatible?The Guardian

Is There a Physiology of Politics Nicholas D. Kristof NYTimes