Overheard

“1+1=2. Mathematics doesn’t get any more basic than this, but even 1+1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon… The hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting. Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can’t learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time.” Stephen Strauss, Globe and Mail

“You’ve seen that repeatedly if you watch much religious television. The health-wealth-and-prosperity gospel advocated by so many televangelists is the ultimate example of this kind of fantasy faith… Christ is no longer the focus of the message. While His name is mentioned from time to time, the real focus is inward, not upward. People are urged to look within; to try to understand themselves; to come to grips with their problems, their hurts, their disappointments; to have their needs met, their desires granted, their wants fulfilled.” John MacArthur

“American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god… From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in ‘sharing their vision of American society.’ Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry. Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public.” News release of a national survey by University of Minnesota’s department of sociology

“As far I’m concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they’re just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we’re fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn’t a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged.” Writer Alan Moore, on the V for Vendetta movie

“But rest assured, with this generation, it’s all just a put-on. Because when a twentysomething uses the language of skepticism, irony, sarcasm and cynicism, he or she may be afraid — but most aren’t genuinely angry. They’re just talking tough… When you read between the lines of this generation, the stinging tone of their cynicism can be stripped away like a protective veneer, a façade, revealing something much more honest, more hopeful.” San Grewal, Toronto Star

“There is definitely a secular bias, because speaking emotionally doesn’t work anymore. There’s a rational, scientific privilege, and all other sorts of language are matters of the heart and don’t have a place.” Munir Jiwa, anthropologist

“It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism” The Logic of Suicide Terrorism