18AR23-01
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AR 23:1 - How "information and words" foil atheist Daniel Dennett
In this issue:
ISLAM - a blueprint for understanding declining pluralism across the Middle East
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES - avoiding another embarrassment?
ORIGINS - does Darwinism account for the most remarkable features of the human mind?
Apologia Report 23:1 (1,367)
January 9, 2018
ISLAM
Purifying the Land of the Pure: A History of Pakistan's Religious Minorities, by Farahnaz Ispahani [1] -- reviewer Kim Ghattas explains that it "describes how Pakistan unraveled - and provides a blueprint for understanding declining pluralism across the Middle East. ...
"Ispahani, a former journalist, was at the time a member of Pakistan’s parliament serving on the Human Rights Committee. Together, the small group had repeatedly tried to raise the issue of minority rights. In parliament, Ispahani had access to more information than the general public and was shocked about the extent of daily violence against minorities - and that none of her colleagues were willing to discuss the issue. ...
"The book ... charts the slow death of minority rights and pluralism in Pakistan, and what it means for the future of democracy. The result is a sweeping but concise chronicle of how things unraveled. A minority herself, as a Shiite, Ispahani was careful to avoid polemic and opinion by delivering a thorough, methodically researched work. She and her husband, former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani, have both faced death threats for their work and live in self-imposed exile in Washington.
"In her book, Ispahani tracks the unraveling to within a few years of the independence of Pakistan. ...
"The trend toward making Islam a central tenet of life in Pakistan started soon after independence in 1947.... By 1973, Islam was declared as the state religion of Pakistan. In 1974 ... parliament declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims. A Muslim movement that started in the late 19th century, Ahmadis follow the teachings of the Quran and consider their founder to be a prophet, upsetting orthodox Muslims who believe Muhammad is the final prophet. ...
"By the mid-1980s, hate literature targeting Shiites was proliferating. ... Since 2003, an estimated 2,558 Shiites have been killed in sectarian violence.
"Ispahani identifies four stages in Pakistan’s loss of minority rights and growing intolerance. The first stage was the 'Muslimization' of society, with transfer of non-Muslim populations out of Pakistan around the time of independence, followed by the rise of an Islamic identity with the loss of East Pakistan. Then came the Islamization of laws under Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s, and finally the rise of militant, organized violence.
"While there was no sudden, overnight transformation, Ispahani nevertheless identifies Zia’s rule as the point of no return. ...
"Between 1947 and today, minorities went from 25 percent of the population to 3 percent." Foreign Policy, Oct 20 '17 <www.goo.gl/UPVU7w>
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JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
The Watchtower Society's annual Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, published since 1927, will no longer be produced according to an internal letter sent to all congregations worldwide dated October 7, 2017. Alexandra James suggests why: "One statistic included in the Yearbook is the number of 'Memorial partakers.' For those unfamiliar, Jehovah's Witnesses teach that only 144,000 persons will go to heaven when they die, with the rest of approved Jehovah's Witnesses living forever in a paradise on earth. (See <www.goo.gl/on4jdY> for more information about that teaching.)
"Jehovah's Witnesses observe the passing of the bread and the wine only once per year, which they call the 'Memorial of Christ's death,' or just the 'Memorial.' According to their teaching, only those who belong in that small group of 144,000 ('the anointed,' or 'the remnant') should partake of that bread and wine.
"Since, according to Jehovah's Witnesses, the number of persons who are to go to heaven is finite or fixed, it would seem logical that the number of those partakers would decrease every year, as those in that group would eventually pass away. Jehovah's Witnesses themselves embraced this thinking:
"'Over the past seven years, from 1974 to 1980 inclusive, Jehovah's Witnesses have made steady progress. Their growth is healthy. Only as to Memorial partakers has there been a gradual decline, which is in accord with Scriptural expectations.' (Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1981, p31)
"However, there have apparently been over 186,000 partakers from the years 2000 to 2016 alone. <www.goo.gl/bEw1vj> Because of this outright conflict with their own teaching, Jehovah's Witnesses have said that some who would partake may have a 'mental or emotional imbalance' <www.goo.gl/wGDG33> or that they 'mistakenly think that they are anointed.'" <www.goo.gl/bHgeic>
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ORIGINS
From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, by Daniel C. Dennett <www.goo.gl/b3X5rV> [2] -- Angus Menuge (professor of philosophy at Concordia University, Wisconsin) begins his review: "Daniel Dennett is the most philosophical member of the New Atheists and a prominent defender of Darwinian materialism." Dennett has "argued that Darwinism accounts not only for the physical diversity of life but also for the most remarkable features of the human mind: consciousness, intentionality, and belief in God.
"In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Dennett considers two main questions. First, how can natural selection, a blind, bottom-up process devoid of foresight and comprehension, produce intelligent designers? How do we get from bacteria to Bach? Second, how can the intelligent designers produce computer programs like Watson, which lack foresight and comprehension but outperform human experts? Who could Watson defeat two champions on Jeopardy? How do we go *back* from intelligent designers to systems such as Watson that seem very intelligent but have no comprehension of what they are doing?
"Underlying both questions, Dennett has a larger goal. He wishes to heal the 'Cartesian wound' that divides the cosmos into two radically different kinds of things - conscious minds and unconscious things. Dennett aims to show that there is a gradual path between blind competence and conscious comprehension (and back again), and argues that consciousness is merely a helpful illusion humans acquired, not a feature of immaterial human souls. ...
"Dennett's clever explanation of human intelligence faces a number of serious objections. His account helps itself to items that are not a good fit for materialism, such as information and words. ...
"Likewise, Dennett's theory of cultural evolution appeals to words....
"Dennett is right that information *in-forms:* it gives reality a coherent form. But if it is part of reality that we can extract, there is an underlying, intelligible order to the world. ... But this points to an intelligent creator.
"Further, if we can know the world, our words must be able to capture reality. If words are merely part of our manifest image, we should only expect them to describe the world as it seems to us....
"Dennett is also right that there can be reasons without humans representing them. But this surely points to an inherent, rational structure of the world. ...
"Finally, the idea that the conscious self is a 'user-illusion' is simply incoherent. Only conscious selves can *have* illusions. ... It makes no sense at all to say that the subject of the illusion is part *of* the illusion." Christian Research Journal, 40:5 - 2017, pp54-5.
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Purifying the Land of the Pure: A History of Pakistan's Religious Minorities, by Farahnaz Ispahani (Oxford Univ Prs, 2017, hardcover, 224 pages) <www.goo.gl/d39gzu>
2 - From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, by Daniel C. Dennett (W. W. Norton, 2017, hardcover, 496 pages) <www.goo.gl/R3eL2w>
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