Wow...Rarely do I see my own thoughts written out better than I could even think them...
The . . . Enlightenment embodied the hope of establishing governments that freed people from superstition and tradition, so that people could use reason and science to generate knowledge useful in improving society. . . . . . . [S]ince the Enlightenment, our modern world has been characterized by a public culture, which holds as primary beliefs the . . . views that rational intelligence must be used both to make it possible for science to produce knowledge and to ensure that this knowledge serves only humane purposes. Moreover, it is understood that society can achieve these goals, and attain the flourishing that results, only when it allows intellectual autonomy to manifest itself fully across the social and the public realms. Thus, attaining the degree of civic friendship needed to maintain the stability of a liberal democracy . . . depends on the extent to which science is understood as necessary for progress in all dimensions of life. When this understanding is strong, then there would be an overwhelming respect for the public culture of civic friendship that sustains autonomy and its associated virtues—freedom, critical thinking, intellectual pluralism, and the civic virtue of toleration.
...Steven M. DeLue
Aside: Have any of you listened to OZOMATLI?
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