假如四人帮在权力争夺中获胜，极左派的命运会有什么不同？
尽管高层权力斗争风云变幻，最终决定一种社会理想成败的，还是它在社会基层的可行性。极左派在文革中推行的农村政策是：农业学大寨，普及大寨县。大寨模式可行，极左派的理想就可行。大寨模式行不通，极左派早晚要退出历史舞台。
文革末期，我在学大寨的最前沿，在极左翼，向更左的方向冲锋，亲身体会到极左派前进的艰难。极左派名声不好，他们的视角很少被顾及。不过，我在左翼受挫的经历，对我理解晚年毛泽东的失败和中国极左势力的衰落大有帮助：我的焦头烂额之处，也是他们举步维艰之地。 (more…)
From Phisics Today
Pervez Hoodbhoy is chair and professor in the department of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he has taught for 34 years. In this article, Professor Hoodbhoy explores, in great length, why the Islamic world is disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge.
Here is something interesting to read. “A generally tolerant and pluralistic Islamic culture allowed Muslims, Christians, and Jews to create new works of art and science together. But over time, the theological tensions between liberal and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam—such as on the issue of free will versus predestination—became intense and turned bloody. A resurgent religious orthodoxy eventually inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mutazilites. Thereafter, the open-minded pursuits of philosophy, mathematics, and science were increasingly relegated to the margins of Islam.” Familiar?
“In defending the compatibility of science and Islam, Muslims argue that Islam had sustained a vibrant intellectual culture throughout the European Dark Ages and thus, by extension, is also capable of a modern scientific culture. The Pakistani physics Nobel Prize winner, Abdus Salam, would stress to audiences that one-eighth of the Qur’an is a call for Muslims to seek Allah’s signs in the universe and hence that science is a spiritual as well as a temporal duty for Muslims. Perhaps the most widely used argument one hears is that the Prophet Muhammad had exhorted his followers to “seek knowledge even if it is in China,” which implies that a Muslim is duty-bound to search for secular knowledge. ” Not so different from the justification of science provided by others.
Here is his general view on science and religion:
“But the above reasoning is superficial and misleading. Science is fundamentally an idea-system that has grown around a sort of skeleton wire frame—the scientific method. The deliberately cultivated scientific habit of mind is mandatory for successful work in all science and related fields where critical judgment is essential. Scientific progress constantly demands that facts and hypotheses be checked and rechecked, and is unmindful of authority. But there lies the problem: The scientific method is alien to traditional, unreformed religious thought. Only the exceptional individual is able to exercise such a mindset in a society in which absolute authority comes from above, questions are asked only with difficulty, the penalties for disbelief are severe, the intellect is denigrated, and a certainty exists that all answers are already known and must only be discovered.”
The Religious Bureau of China recently issued a Regulation on the Reincarnation of Buddha. Here is a digest of it.
Article 4. A Buddha can not reincarnate when any of the following conditions is met: …
(2) the local city government does not permit such reincarnation.
and
Article 10. Before a candidate assumes Buddha’s position, an official from the government agency that issues reincarnation permissions shall read the permission, and the candidate shall obtain a certificate issued by the Buddhism Association of an appropriate level.
The certificate shall be made in accordance with a national standard by the Buddhism Association of the national level. All issued certificates shall be registered in the Religious Bureau of China.