Read both the first post by D’Souza and then read the response:

D’SOUZA SAYS: “Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.

“The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul–well, that’s an illusion!”.

Read both the first post by D’Souza and then read the response.

On teaching people how to think:

“I believe the School of Thinking’s work in teaching people how to think may be the most important thing going on in the world today!”

- PROFESSOR GEORGE GALLUP of The Gallup Poll, Princeton NJ.

On School of Thinking lessons:

“When I first saw a School of Thinking lesson in action, I was amazed at how something so simple and so much fun could be so quick and effective in developing a person’s ‘thinking muscle’. We all, as individuals, need these thinking skills.”

- PAUL B. MACCREADY JR, Inventor of the Gossamer Albatross, father of man-powered flight.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Lest We Forget.

Visit the Melbourne Shrine.

SIMON SAYS: Here it is, the full interview between John Battlelle and Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google at the recent Web 2.0 Expo. Courtesy YouTube. Enjoy.

I think the time has come to escape from the concept of ‘Holy Wars’ and to return to the concept of ‘Just Wars’.

Since the ‘Holy War’ concept was invented by Augustine of Hippo, such a move could be accomplished by Pope Benedict XVI who is not only a thinker but also an Augustinian scholar. In fact, with his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, he may have already begun to do so.

Just Wars
Before Augustine, Aristotle coined the phrase ‘Just War’ in Politics to show acceptable warfare categories. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ and was acceptable in instances such as self-defence to avoid the state’s enslavement; or to obtain an empire to benefit the inhabitants of the state. There was no concept of a holy or religious war. Then the Romans built on Aristotle’s ideas and added causa belli, wars for a just cause. In God’s War, Christopher Tyerman says: “The practical consequences of these theories lent an aura of justice to all Rome’s wars against external enemies.”

Holy Wars
Later, Rome evolved into a Christian Empire under the authority of the popes. Pax Romana came to mean Christian Peace. To the enemies of the State were now added the enemies of the Faith. Now, even heresy could be positioned as treason. Then, along comes Augustine and to ‘just cause’ he adds ‘just intent’ and that means ‘the authority of God’. Now we can have ‘Holy Wars’ because … Deus Vult! God wills it!

This began the disastrous move from ‘Just Wars’ to ‘Holy Wars’. Although Augustine was no warmonger himself, his new premise provided the basis for later warmongers to up the ante. Tyerman says: “Nonetheless, Augustine had moved the justification of violence from lawbooks to liturgies, from the secular to the religious.”

In the 9th century, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade as a ‘Holy War’ and it’s been on for young and old ever since. Holy War became an enduring obsession of the papacy, part of the papal programme … bellum Dei, a war of God.

I think we have outlived Augustine’s concept of Holy War and it would be much better if we returned to Aristotle’s earlier concept of Just War. If we could manage such a move it would be a big step on the way to the ultimate humanitarian goal … of no wars at all!

Deus Caritas Est (God is Love)
No-one is in a better position to facilitate this than the current pope. Imagine if he undid the work of his predecessor, Urban II, and preached not that “God wants war” but that “God wants peace”. What a contribution Rome could make! He already seems to be changing the position of the church from the ‘ownership of TRUTH’ to the ’search for TRUTH’ and from ‘God is Vengeful’ to ‘God is Love’. This is indeed revolutionary stuff for a pope. Maybe he can go one more step and discredit the whole concept of ‘Holy War’ once and for all. Watch this pope, he is a quiet revolutionary.

Sir Steven Runciman in his modern epic, History of the Crusades, closes with, “Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God.”

As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert points out, most of us make three important decisions in our lives: where to live, what to do and with whom to do it. But the reality is that we’re really the first human beings to make those decisions.

For most of recorded time, people lived where they were born and they followed their parents’ jobs. Millers milled, smiths smithed, carpenters hammered, and coopers made barrels. All of them associated with people who did the same. They married whom and when they were told.

The agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions changed everything, producing personal liberties, opinions and a dizzying number of choices. For the first time, happiness became our responsibility and we had the element of control.

While economists are now looking at such happiness-related concepts as the “indifference curve” and measuring utility in “utils”, the trouble is most practitioners of the dismal science seem clueless when it comes to basic psychology.

The Age article has more … 

It’s on right now. WEB 2 in San Francisco is the biggest web gathering abut the web and history is in the making. Our own web guru, Simon Chen, is there and blogging furiously live. If you can’t be there (like me) then Simon’s your man in SFO. By the way, if you’re into the web and the power of Google you should be a member of Simon’s blog anyway. He also makes me laugh