In today’s Guardian Ronan Bennett goes after Martin Amis for “The Age of Horrorism,” a nasty 12,000-word essay on Islam published in The Observer (The Guardian’s sister pub) last year. My take on Amis’s essay, written last year after the original article came out, is here. (A shorter version, published in the U. of Chicago Sightings series, is here.)
The Guardian reported last week that a fight has broken out between Terry Eagleton and Martin Amis, who now are both teaching at Manchester University. In a new introduction to his primer Ideology, Eagleton attacks Amis’s views on Islam, coming within a hair’s breadth of calling Amis a racist for “The Age of Horrorism,” a three-part essay Amis published last year in the Observer. The Guardian has now published Eagleton’s response to the latest article, as well as Amis’s letter responding to the response.
When Amis’s essay first showed up, I wrote an essay responding to it. A much-shortened version was published by a U. of Chicago email broadsheet called Sightings. Since the subject has come up again, I thought I’d post the original version in its entirety below. (Warning: it’s long.)
(Photo by Stuart Price.)
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The Seduction of Reasons
“Courage, sir” is the basic prerequisite of serious moral thought, and for good reason. [Read more]
The Guardian reports today that J. Craig Venter, runner-up in the race to map the genome, has “built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.”
According to the article, Venter and his team have built from scratch a chromosome of 381 genes for a new bacterium they’re calling Mycoplasma laboratorium. With techniques invented by Venter’s team, they’re able to insert the chromosome into living bacteria and encourage it to take over for the host’s DNA. In this way, a bacterium based entirely on Venter’s synthetic genome may be born. He has already filed a patent for the new organism.
With characteristic immodesty Venter calls the step “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species.” “We are dealing in big ideas,” he said, “We are trying to create a new value system for life.”
Venter’s rhetoric is pitched to land him back in the only place he’s ever really happy: center stage in the media spotlight. And if the Guardian article is any indication—the subhead for the article reads “Breakthrough could combat global warming”—the world’s media stands ready to help. [Read more]
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