Word: seculare
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...variety of people saying the different things they knew about Noah's ark." That excuse will hardly mollify discriminating TV viewers. And it will not defuse the anger of archaeologists like Richard Fox, of the University of South Dakota. Writing in the current edition of Free Inquiry, a secular humanist publication, Fox charges, "The program abused my profession and insulted its practitioners. And CBS is responsible...
...special talent for the propagation of scandal. In his letter John Paul bluntly criticized the U.S. media, charging them with making matters worse by their treatment of the problem. "Evil can indeed be sensational, but the sensationalism surrounding it is always dangerous for morality." The licentiousness of the secular world is another scapegoat. Last week Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican's chief spokesman, said, "One would have to ask if the real culprit is not a society that is irresponsibly permissive, hyperinflated with sexuality ((and)) capable of creating circumstances that induce even people who have received a solid moral formation...
...terrible inequities, its self-inflicted wounds, its crushing mediocrity in science and many cultural fields." In sum, if Said is the Arab world's propagandist, it should hire a new one fast. He has always rejected the "tyranny and atavism" of Islamic fundamentalism, in the name of the secular, liberal and humane strand in Arab culture whose voices are silenced by Middle Eastern regimes and ignored in America. "People try to characterize me as a spokesman for the Arab states," says Said, "but I'm not. I've always tried to retain my independence. I've always spoken out against...
Which is, in the end, the only compelling case against the new gadgetry. When it was just a matter of spending too much time watching CNN and Who's the Boss? reruns, American couch-potato-ism was more amusing than depressing. But if the last remaining rich, secular public rituals -- shopping, moviegoing, browsing in the company of human strangers -- become reduced to solitary, freeze-dried experiences, we will have impoverished ourselves. The future, as it happens, will feel futuristic after all. But at least the Jetsons occasionally went out and mingled...
...visages of the third act. An American, the sculptor Richard Serra, says blithely, "Abraham Lincoln High School, 'High on the hilltop midst sand and sea' -- that's about as far as I trace Abraham." Coming as it does after two acts of religious zealotry, the comment expresses a contemporary, secular kind of cultural truth -- Who cares who Abraham was? In the end that point of view may be just as valid as the Middle Eastern ones, and a lot more peaceful...