Galen to Jaromir: On Dawkins, etc.

Tuesday
November 14, 2006

Dear Jaromir,

Thanks for the very thoughtful note. Your English is much better than my Czech. (Which is nil.) Again, it was a breath of fresh air to hear my own sentiments so succinctly articulated by a kindred spirit. So much so, in fact, that I'm going to take the liberty of passing them along to a select few friends via my Symposium Mythoklasticum. Hope that that's OK. As we say in show biz: "I think you totally nailed it!"

Since you mention Dawkins, I thought that perhaps I'd put in a plug here for Sam Harris's The End of Faith, which came out in paperback recently. Ten years from now, it will be interesting to see which approach will have had the deepest impact on the public's consciousness. Myself, as the inventor of the mythoklastic school of therapy and the founder of the Institute for Mythoklastic Studies, I'm always and forever in favor of whatever catalysts result in folks' awareness being raised. If I recall correctly, growing up was a sometimes painful process, fraught with what we used to call "disillusionment." So that, if ontogeny does indeed recapitulate phylogeny, then it's apt to prove equally messy for these billions of us participating in 21st century global society. Eh?

As far as Thanksgiving is concerned, Marie & I are entirely flexible. Completely. We would be honored to join the two of you wherever -- and would love to bring along a case of presentable pilsner as our contribution. We'll simply await word from you.

Mythoklastic Sunshine,

Galen

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Hi Galen,
you very welcome and it was a pleasure to have you two around. I agree with you, meaning the working "environment" - people over here are quite weird, regarding world wide views. That is the toughest part of the life in Midwest - for me. We feel many times very strange, I would describe it as the movie "Back to the future" without that fun, more like myself appearing suddenly in Spain in the inquisition time.
Talking about the Thanksgiving, we have the plans already - but, Magda will let you know soon if they can be altered regarding you and Marie. Mainly I am replying about Dawkins. I found an article in "Wired" magazine 'The church of the non-believers', where the reporter is resembling the thoughts of the three most 'statued' atheists in US. A very good friend of mine, who is reputable chemist - physicist professor, researchist, and also the believer, who refuses Dawkins because of Dawkins being so selfish and not leaving any room for the opposite side. I suppose he would perfectly agree with Francis Collins, who opposes Dawkins in the same way as well (article in 'Time' magazine). But I can not help myself - from all of them (Harris and Bennet) - Dawkins is the most consistent in his thinking about the problem. I think, he is not selfish at all, but he most probably feels, that the time is running out and the humans should start thinking
really hard and face to the real problems, in the order to survive, and to keep the nature on this planet going, before we destroy it by ignoring the facts and keep polemyzing and arguing about the nonsense. And I understand, that in the play is the greed for the power and money and this kind of the people does not give a rat about anything else than about how to achieve what they want. The religion is the best tool so far discovered, to make the masses to do what "the management" wants. That returns us back to Dawkins - genetically motivated development of an individual (evolution) and a sense of the survival. More "capable" will win, n'est pas? (how very Christian!)

Jaromir