METAXY: * Noam Chomsky ~ Linguist, Political Commentator, Intellectual, Prolific Writer

Sunday, December 17, 2006

* Noam Chomsky ~ Linguist, Political Commentator, Intellectual, Prolific Writer

"The Bible is probably the most genocidal book ever written." Noam Chomsky

Nim Chimpsky
Sign-Language Chimp
Appropriately named after the great Noam Chomsky, Linguist

Nim Chimpsky

"The chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky was the subject of a landmark experiment in teaching sign language to apes. Named in a humorous salute to language theorist Noam Chomsky, Nim was raised in a human-like setting and taught sign language as if he were a human child. Nim learned to use basic signs but, it was generally agreed, did not develop complex language skills."

Nim by Herbert S. Terrace

* * *Noam Chomsky, the founder of modern Linguistics, is also among the leading leftist thinkers in the world. Teaching at MIT, he is one of the world's top three intellectuals.

Biography
Bibliography
Chomsky's ZBlog

Chomsky said: "I was just looking at a study by an American sociologist (published in England) of comparative religious attitudes in various countries. The figures are shocking. Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that -- it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population."

Definition of God

"How do I define God? I don't. Divinities have been understood in various ways in the cultural traditions that we know. Take, say, the core of the established religions today: the Bible. It is basically polytheistic, with the warrior God demanding of his chosen people that they not worship the other Gods and destroy those who do -- in an extremely brutal way, in fact. It would be hard to find a more genocidal text in the literary canon, or a more violent and destructive character than the God who was to be worshipped. So that's one definition ..."

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