Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "epistemology"

Boko Haram, the Islamo-fascist movement that is currently terrorizing Northern Nigeria and other states on its porous borders, is a collection of murderous, brain-dead bastards. However, in its depravity it has got one thing right: it has identified the enemy that can destroy it, though only in the long term, namely secular education, whose banning it trumpets in its very name. This was also recognized by another Islamo-fascist organization, the Pakistani Taliban, when they attempted to murder a girl who stood up to their attempts to deny all girls an education. Fortunately, they failed, and in so doing made Malala Yousafzai a global hero. Those two antagonists encapsulate the battle of the 21st century, a battle over books. Books that must never be changed or challenged, whatever the real-world evidence suggests, versus books that present current knowledge with a rider that it is neither infallible nor complete. To put it another way, fiction masquerading as non-fiction versus non-fiction that acknowledges its own limitations. Either way, it’s all about books.