RE: an article you may both hate. or like.
[{"sender": "Lawrence Krauss", "recipients": ["Noam Chomsky", "jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com>"], "timestamp": "Thursday, September 10, 2015 1:51 AM", "subject": "an article you may both hate. or like.", "body": "hope all is well.\n\nLawrence\n\nhttp://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/all-scientists-should-be-militant-atheists"}, {"sender": "Noam Chomsky", "recipients": ["Lawrence Krauss [lkrauss@asu.edu]", "jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]"], "timestamp": "9/10/2015 5:52:30 PM", "subject": "RE: an article you may both hate. or like.", "body": "Thanks for sending. A wide area of agreement, but not total. \nOn confronting dogma, I of course agree — though in my opinion the secular religions — nationalist fanaticism, etc. — are \nmuch more dangerous. And if some find rational discussion offensive — as, for example, mainstream academics find \ndismantling myths of \"American exceptionalism\" or \"Israeli self-defense\" or Obama's mass murder campaign, etc., \noffensive — so be it. \nBut I don't see why that should extend to ridicule. That includes astrologists. Astronomers can refute astrology, while \nrecognizing that perfectly honest and deluded people may believe it and should be treated with respect, while their \nbeliefs are confronted with evidence. I also don't see why we should ridicule religious dogma, just as I don't think we \nshould ridicule the much more pernicious secular dogmas. Rather, we should respond to irrational belief with argument \nand evidence, while recognizing that their advocates (like most of the intellectual world in the case of secular dogma) \nare people who we should be responding to but without ridiculing them. It may be hard sometimes. For example, when \nthe icon and founding father of sober non-sentimental Realism in International Affairs informs us that the US, unlike \nother countries, has a \"transcendental purpose,\" and the fact that it constantly acts in contradiction to its purpose \ndoesn't matter because the facts are just \"abuse of history\" while real history is \"the evidence of history as our minds \nreflect it,\" then it's hard to avoid ridicule. But we should. There's no point ridiculing virtually the entire IR profession \nand the major journals, even though such extraordinary irrationality leads to major human disasters. \nOn Davis, I frankly think that's a non-issue. If she decides she cannot do her job as the conditions of employment \nrequire (including following the law), then she can quit and look for another job. As in any other such case.\n\nNoam"}]