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Wendy Kaminer Biography

Wendy Kaminer (born 1949) is an American lawyer and writer. She has written several books on contemporary social issues, including A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight From Equality, about the conflict between egalitarian and protectionist feminism; I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions, about the self-help movement; and Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety.

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Wendy Kaminer Quotes

There's a way in which all of these grazers at the spirituality buffet are performing a service, because you could argue that grazing leads to a kind of tolerance. People who incorporate teachings from a lot of different traditions into their own belief systems are going to be more tolerant than people who confine themselves within the strict boundaries of one particular religion. Does it contribute to our confusion? I don't know if it contributes to confusion so much as it is evidence of a certain kind of silliness and shallowness.

Confusion, Evidence, Grazers, People, Teaching

Under the rubric of religious freedom, we respect the right to worship differently much more than the right to worship not at all.

Atheism, Differently, Religion, Religious, Respect, Worship

Jargon seems to be the place where the right brain and the left brain meet.

Brain, Jargon, Left, Place

The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans -- 34 percent of them -- in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason.

Dangerous, Fascination, Growing, Pseudoscience

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.

Affirmation, Capacity, Certainty, Doubt, Real, Science

The scarcest resource these days is reason. What's certainly striking about American culture today is the great hostility toward science and the decline of respect for rational scientific thinking. People seem to think that we are ruled by the scientific method and that we overvalue reason. If there was ever a period when we overvalued reason, I think that it was probably extremely brief. What I see now is a great deal of superstition, as much superstition as there has ever been. There are probably more people who believe in guardian angels than who understand the law of gravity.

Believe, Angel, Thinking, Reason, Resource

The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate.

Belief, Political, Productive, Rationality, Thinking

Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

Causes, Faith, Function, Insult, Stupidity

As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.

Absolutism, Attitude, Camille, Marketable, Thought

It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.

Atheism, Equally, Intellectual, Matter, Virtues

Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.

Democracy, Everyone, Opportunity, Right, Vices

What makes fantastic declarations believable is, in part, the vehemence with which they're proffered. Again, in the world of spirituality as well as of pop psychology, intensity of personal belief is evidence of truth. It is considered very bad form - even abuse - to challenge the veracity of any personal testimony that might be offered in a twelve-step group or on a talk show, unless the testimony itself is equivocal. . . Whatever sells, whatever many people believe strongly, must be true.

Believe, Challenges, Group, People, Pop, Testimony

Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality.

Essentials, Faith, Like, Popularly, Reality

I don't spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don't consider that a relevant question. It's unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in the category of things I can't worry about.

Thinking, Worry, Atheism, Life, Time, Exists

Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.

Atheist, People, Rapture, Religious, Surprising, Thin

I don't think of myself as having a particular role. I'm lucky enough to be able to make my living essentially by expressing my opinions. But, you know, I think the world would manage quite well if I weren't doing it.

Know, Lucky, Particular, Thinking, World

Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest. . . . But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism. ) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

Book, Elevate, Intellectual, Intellectually, Punishment, Self

For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.

Execution, Executions, Obscurity, People, Televised

There are only two states of being in the world of codependency - recovery and denial.

Denial, Recovery, States, Two, World

When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven.

Angel, Children, Finds, Heaven, Publishers

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