Neuroscience, Relgious Conservatism & Truth

I am currently reading The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. I am on page 130, right about where Pinker starts lambasting the neocons and creationists. “Ironically, today many modern conservatives fervently agree with Karl Marx that religion is ‘the opium of the people’; they add a a heartfelt, ‘Thank God!’”

That quote came from Ronald Bailey , in “Origin of the Specious,” Reason, July 1997. Bailey goes on to write:

There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.

Pinker writes, “Many conservative intellectuals join fundamentalist Christians in deploring neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, which they see as explaining away the soul, eternal values, and free choice.”

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