[Buddha-l] What Batcehlor actually said

[curt]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> Dr Curtis Steinmetz wrote:
>
>   
>> It is a common misconception that "until recently religions maintained
>> that the earth was flat." ("Buddhism Without Beliefs" p. 35)
>>     
>
> Just for the sake of completeness, here is the entire paragraph from which the 
> phrase above was taken. It may be worth noting that the paragraph appears in 
> a chapter entitled "Rebirth."
>
>
>   
I would be very interested to know what Richard thinks the significance 
of the context is in this case. It would seem to me that Batchelor just 
drops this little chestnut down in order to help prop up the overall 
view that Religion is the Arch-enemy of Reason. The fact that this is 
what Batchelor presents as his evidence lends support to my suspicion 
that Batchelor merely BELIEVES IN a fantasy the fantasy of a long 
twilight struggle between Good (Reason) and Evil (Religion). The fact is 
that no such struggle exists and that this belief relies on a skewed (if 
all too common) version of history that conflicts with readily available 
and well documented facts.

And just for the record, please note that I quoted Batchelor's exact 
words in my first post - and provided the page number of the book that 
the quote was taken from. Richard's subject heading is therefore 
intentionally misleading.

- Curt